


Marisa's Eight Deadly Sins

by WildwoodRose



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:47:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27464425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildwoodRose/pseuds/WildwoodRose
Summary: Whilst becoming a new mother to twelve year old Lyra, Marisa considers her relationship with the eight deadly sins. How they have affected her life, and how they continue to affect her daughter.
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter, Lyra Belacqua & Marisa Coulter, Marisa Coulter & Lord Asriel, Marisa Coulter & Lord Boreal
Comments: 20
Kudos: 57





	1. Lust

**Marisa's** **Eight Deadly Sins**

Chapter One: Lust

Marisa fingered through the two letters in her hand. Written by two different hands, both in obvious haste as the ink had not yet dried before they had been enclosed and sent off to post. One's handwriting she was acquainted with well. One, not so well.

Dr Carne. The Master of Jordan College himself. Lyra's sole 'legal' guardian.

Marisa's hand crumpled the letters slightly in her grip, as a rush of thrill, excitement, _glee_ ... sweet winning coursed through her veins. That Dr Carne would contact _her_ , for _her_ help, after her - she is loathed to even admit to herself - _five_ correspondences she has sent to the insipid man throughout the course of her daughter's life, without any form of reply from him. He needed her help.

A cruel smirk twitched at her lips, before it shone all over her face and throughout her body. Puffing her chest out like the arrogant monkey she was, she took in a long satisfied breath, before she blew it blissfully out, relaxing comfortably into the back of her large office chair. She unwrapped her legs and let her knees bow open as far as the skirt of her dress would allow her, because it was just her, and she was feeling very satisfied.

Mpangi jumped on to the desk.

Just her and Mpangi, who strutted towards her, almost like a prowl, before resting on her lap, stroking his tail, back and forth under her chin.

Placing the letters on the table, her fingers massaged her daemon's golden and black fur liberally, until he was purring like a cat.

Yes, the feeling was very, _very_ sweet.

Cradled in her arms like a baby, Marisa petted her daemon until he was on the verge of closing his golden-brown eyes to sleep, before she sat up sharply, fingers picking up her letters again and spreading them out.

He let out a small yowl and Marisa tutted him over his behaviour. "Quiet", she scolded, skimming through the letters again.

Her daemon climbed off her lap to analyse the letters himself.

Momentarily shutting away the euphoric feeling of success over what she had _perhaps_ quietly been pining for since she had learnt Asriel had taken Lyra to Jordan aside; both letters sounded urgent, as if they really feared Lyra was in danger.

She wondered whether they both knew the other had written to her.

She doubted it. Dr Carne's letter damned Asriel. Asriel's damned Dr Carne. Both stating that the other was not to be trusted. They both sounded like snivelling school boys, crying about who had punched who first.

She turned the letters over to find the other sides both blank.

She turned them back over and studied both of their signatures. A finger reached to trace the loop of Asriel's name before she retracted it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that her daemon had rested a hand on Asriel's letter and tutted at him again.

Then, came a knock on her office door.

"Come in", Marisa snapped, going to fold her letters away from prying servant's eyes, but her daemon's hands were quicker than hers and had already collected them and now sat on top of them, hiding them perfectly.

They trusted no one.

Their eyes tracked the servant as he walked into the room and placed another letter at the furthest most corner of their desk, before he turned around and walked out the door, closing it with a soft click.

The monkey sat up off the letters and crawled to pick up the new one, inspecting the handwriting and making sure it hadn't been opened or read, before handing it to his other half.

It was from Boreal.

Marisa took the letter opener her monkey handed her and delicately opened it, despite her wanting to rip it apart. She enjoyed the way it burned and clenched, the immense self control over not giving into her inner feral.

Her eyes skimmed through the letter quickly, her monkey hedging impatiently next to her, wanting to read it through himself incase she missed anything.

Marisa let out the breath she was holding. It didn't really tell her anything more than what Asriel's and Dr Carne's letters had told her, except that Father MacPhail had made stopping Asriel his number one priority, and that this was their moment of play they had been waiting for. Both went without saying. Not that Asriel's work was actually a threat, she was more of a threat than he was. The fool.

She was glad to hear that Boreal would be returning to her flat this evening, she was feeling immensely pleased with herself, and nothing but a good fuck would even begin to satisfy the magnitude of neurones that were racing through her.

She would finally be getting her daughter back. How many times over the years had she berated and abused herself over her incessant longing for her daughter? Forcing herself to bury those feelings into the very pit of her intestines. How many times had she lost herself in imagined moments, meet ups with Lyra aged one, two, three, all throughout the years until now, twelve years later. Imagined how people would preen and coo over her and her perfect little girl, who was beautiful, just like her mother...

Marisa coughed away her building emotions and gently wiped a hand over her eyes which were starting to well with tears. Now was not the time, there was so much to do and plan...

Still, she couldn't wait to show her off. It would be the biggest fuck you to all who ever doubted that she would get her daughter back. All who turned their nose up at her as she walked past them, shunned her, or even worse, _pitied_ her. She, Marisa Coulter, had her own career, money, power and property that wasn't tied to or dictated by any man. She had the security of a husband's name but could fuck whoever she wanted, when she wanted, and not worry about any repercussions. And soon she would have her daughter back, and when she did, no one could say that she was, 'unfulfilled', or didn't have it all.

She would have the lifestyle that every sensible woman in Brytain craved for. And then, when her project was a success and daemon separation produced perfect, law abiding, Authority fearing, un-sinful future generations; that lived harmoniously with each other, and would never create anything as despicable as wars, or weapons of mass destruction, or any weapon or instrument or law intended to extinct a whole people. She would be the most powerful person in all of Brytain. More powerful than any man with a cock and balls because she had a cunt which was life giving, and her invention would give life to a new generation that lived in perpetual peace. That would be her legacy.

Satisfied, Marisa put away her letters from Asriel and Dr Carne into the draw on the left side of her desk.

Boreal's she threw in the litter bin.

Before she closed the draw, she gazed at one of the photograms she kept in there. The black and white shot of her and Makiese in Zyaire. Both their daemons were leopard cubs, often taking that form to mimic Makiese's father, Bakome, leopard daemon, Benesha. Back then, she was as golden as the gold on her monkey.

She slid that photogram to the side, to find the one of Lyra when she was seven years old. They were piled in age order. She had asked Asriel to stop giving them to her after age seven. Despite how much she used to look forward to them, they made her weak and distracted her from what was important. Which was her career, power, proving to everyone that she was the smartest person they had ever met, going beyond what anyone had ever expected her too. And she didn't regret it, because it got her to where she was now.

Her fingers moved through the photograms behind it.

After Lyra had turned three, as well as a photogram of the child, Asriel had also given her a ring and asked her to marry him - again, he added. The law required time of two years between marriage had passed, the three of them could be a family. She had laughed in his face because although it was mere crumbs to the power she had now, there was no way she was going to give up the freedom that she had already attained. To what, become another man's wife and have Edward's money and property and everything she had worked for so far to just be forwarded to him? To only be allowed the freedom _he_ allowed her? While she would stay at home with Lyra and the Authority only knows how many other children he would have impregnated her with, while he blindly gallivanted with _her_ money around the North, looking to tear portholes to other worlds through Dust?

Asriel didn't know this, but you needed a very specific, special knife to cut through to other worlds, and one no longer existed. But, he provided a necessary distraction, the Magisterium were too busy loosing their heads over the power they thought they would loose over what Asriel was never going to find, that Marisa basically had them eating out of her hands over the power she promised them - _would_ deliver.

Asriel had growled that he wouldn't ask her a third time. She snarled back that he had in fact only asked her once - just now, but she wouldn't say yes even if he did ask again. She had a right to her own money, she had earned it.

Returning to the present, Marisa stared at the dark eyes of the three year old looking back at her.

'This child is infected with sin'.

~xXx~

_'Lust', strong sexual desire._

Marisa remembers the first time she was acquainted with the sin, lust. Although as a young child she hadn't connected the way Bakome and her mother spent hours a day nakedly wrapped in each other in her parents' bed chamber as lust at the time, she will never forget the threat her mother made to her as the two of them admired her new little brother whilst he fed off her mother's chest.

_'Isn't he beautiful, Marisa?'_

_She nodded. Happy to be peacefully snuggled next to her mother after a very long day of trying to drown out her screams._

_'Do you love him?'_

_She nodded. She really did._

_'Would you do anything to protect him?'_

_She nodded again, smiling. Bakome told her she was a good hunter._

_'And you would never hurt him? Or let anyone else hurt him?'_

_She shook her head, no, very seriously._

_Her mother put the hand that had been around her over her mouth and nose. She didn't think anything of it at first, but then when she couldn't breathe, she sought her mother's attention, thinking she hadn't been aware of what she was doing._

_But she was, and she looked deadly serious._

_Tears started to fill her eyes as she became frightened, but then her mother suddenly let go._

_Mpangi curled around her neck as a leopard cub, and she agreed that going to Bakome was a good idea, but her mother's hand stopped her escape, and then her mother's daemon, Tchaka, put his mouth around Mpangi's neck and he immediately turned into a kitten._

_'Shh child', bringing her into her free bosom. 'I was only trying to teach you a lesson. It didn't feel nice, did it?'_

_She shook her head, no, into her mother's skin, and started crying._

_'You wouldn't want anyone to do that to your baby brother would you?'_

_She shakes her head, no, again._

_'Well that is exactly what your father will do to him if he finds out about him. Never tell anyone about him, do you understand?'_

_She nodded._

_'Come now, stop your tears and I'll let you hold him'._

_Her new baby brother looked so tiny in her mother's arm but he filled both of hers._

_'Look at that, you're almost the same colour as him', her mother says. 'You spend much too long in the sun', she scolds, but she doesn't sound angry about it. "You're my beautiful girl, Marisa'._

_Marisa nods, looking back down at her baby brother in her arms, and his tiny leopard cub daemon curled around his neck._

_The next day she watches Bakome kill a goat and paint the mattress from her parents' room with it, before putting it near the entrance of the house. Then his wife, Diba, makes goat curry for lunch._

_The goat's blood has long since dried into the mattress the day when Bakome runs into her parents' room to tell her mother that her husband's car has been spotted. Her mother looks at her and says that it's time to say goodbye to her brother._

_Re-bathed and dressed in a frilly white dress and sun hat by a tribe woman who is not, Diba, she watches Bakome, Diba and Makiese leave the estate, her baby brother, Bakomito, wrapped in a cloth around Diba's back._

She feels Mpangi's tail gently rub underneath her chin, pulling her out of the memory. Her eyes refocus on the scenery outside the airship window and the college spires of Oxford come into focus under the setting sun. She remembers when she first saw, Oxford, in Britain, how shocked she was to find it structurally so similar to her own Oxford in Brytain. It brought about all sorts of questions of how long the portal between the two worlds had been open. Which Oxford was constructed first and who was the real brains behind the architecture.

~xXx~

At last, Marisa thought as she disembarked the airship, breathing out the coiled-up tension from within her and trying to will her mind to be light. She was here after all, and soon she would be with Lyra.

It took her much longer than she had planned to get here, and it was all because of Boreal. First, because she hadn't wanted to tell him about Asriel's and Dr Carne's letters, it was her own private matter and Lyra was _hers_. So she had to plan quietly around him. Then it was because he just wouldn't leave. She was on the verge of ringing his neck when he flitted an opened letter in her direction.

_'Coincidentally, have you received any post recently from the Master of Jordan? He wrote to me this morning, apparently he has tried to get in contact with you regarding your daughter'._

_Thankfully, his back had been to her so he didn't get to see her expression or Mpangi's ruffled fur._

_'Yes, I had wondered why you hadn't mentioned it until now", she acted cool. 'I mentioned it in the letter I sent you', making sure to put a hint of snappishness in her voice._

_'What letter?' He asked, looking over his shoulder._

_She berated the butler in front of Boreal for misplacing her post before promptly firing him._

_'This is the room you have prepared for her?' He inspected the room that used to solely house her grand piano._

_'What's wrong with it?'_

_'She's twelve years old, Delamere. Don't you think this is a bit old for her?'_

_She frowned as she looked over her hard work. 'She's a young lady', closing the door. Not knowing why she had showed Boreal the room where her daughter would be sleeping._

_'She could be useful to us', he stopped her before she turned._

_'With Asriel, yes I know, that is why I've agreed to take her in', she smiled, silently vowing to never leave Lyra alone with this man._

"Can I help you with your luggage, Mam?" Someone asks her.

She offers him her pretty smile, gloating to herself when the man immediately goes red in the face. "That's very kind, but no thank-you", she sings as gently as possible.

She had already organised a car beforehand and Mpangi seems to have located a suitable boy who could run on ahead and let Dr Carne know she was on her way. She had replied to him with her intended arrival day and time, but she wanted to be sure she wouldn't be waiting outside the college entrance whilst the porters at the door decided whether to let her in or not.

"Well, hello young man", she greets the little boy, who scowls at her at first, but then looks up at her in wonder, "I have a use for you".

Mpangi appears on her shoulder and his expression deepens to wonderment. Although you saw all sorts of species of daemons in the colleges and universities, it would be rare for a country boy like himself to see one in person.

"Wow, how did you get your daemon to settle like that?" He asks, and she can tell by the way he fidgets that he wants to touch him. His own daemon perches on his shoulder as vole, but it has copied the markings on Mpangi. "You're not from the Africas are you?"

"How very astute of you", she smiles.

His face frowns slightly.

_He probably doesn't know what you just said._

"Tell me little boy, do you like chocolatl?"

~xXx~

_'Marisa, ma princesse, there is someone very important I want you to meet'._

_She looked over from where she was sat with the other society girls to her mother and the man stood next to her. Large, but not as fat as some of the other men here, dark brown hair which had disappeared at the top and a kind smile on his face, she had seen this man before. He had been calling on her mother for a while now._

_He was from Switzerland, she knew that from the gossiping, very rich businessman, visiting from Benin and looking for a young wife._

_She stopped walking towards them, suddenly worried that he was looking for her to be his young wife. Mpangi turned into a brown mouse and hid underneath the collar of her dress. Surely at nine years old, she was much too young to be married._

_'Come on, mon chaton', her mother held out her hand. 'Sorry, she is a bit shy'._

_Her father had died suddenly three months ago from a heart attack, so it had been three months since she and her mother had to leave their farm and their life there and try to start again in the city whilst they waited for her father's inheritance money to come through. The city was where her father had worked as an overseas diplomat stationed from Belgium, and the society ladies and gentlemen had been very kind to her and her mother, allowing them to stay for free because 'they looked after their own'. So that meant lots of frilly white dresses and hats, no running, endless teas and luncheons, and a lot of speaking English, as it was the main language that connected all the other languages in the city._

_Mrs Acton, a very very kind society lady, as her mother called her, had been teaching her the King's English and the correct pronunciation of words. Mrs Acton said she was doing very well, and could easily be mistaken as a young English lady. Her mother was very proud of her and got her to teach her the new words and the correct pronunciations in the evenings before they went to sleep in their shared bed. Her mother tried and practiced very hard, but her accent was still very strong._

_'See, didn't I tell you she was the most beautiful girl in all the world?' Her mother says, her gloved hand stroking her cheek. She can feel Tchaka weaving in and out her ankles, purring._

_'The most beautiful girl in the world', the Switzerland man corrected. 'But, yes, you did and, yes, she is', he said smiling at her, in what she had then thought to be kindness, but now recognised it for what it was, lust._

_Still, when her mother pushed out her second baby brother, his skin flashing between red and white, her mother stroked the puppy that curled around his neck._

_'Don't worry, ma chaton', she said to her. 'We can keep this one'._

_She turned to look up at her mother, who was staring down at her newest baby brother with tears in her eyes._

She feels Mpangi's hand on her lap and she refocusses on the now and realises they were outside Jordan College. She shouldn't have been surprised, it was a very short distance from the airfield, she could have walked.

Her car door opens and the chauffeur helps her out. There was a Jordan College attendant waiting outside for her, and that same little boy looking very pleased that he managed to fulfil the task.

Marisa straightens her trench coat, the one she had purchased the last time she was in Britain, and admires the front of the building, Jordan College, it had been a long, long time since she last graced this entrance way.

~xXx~

She walks the hallways lazily, thoroughly indulging in her own self satisfaction of being able to venture so freely, whilst musing about the times Asriel used to sneak her in here.

 _If these walls could talk_.

She‘d heard the earlier commotion of everyone readying for dinner but she decided not to rush herself, she liked making an entrance, and perhaps also she was delaying the moment she was reunited with Lyra.

She walks some more whilst she rehearses what she had already practiced to say to the girl, before she pulled herself up short on how foolish she was being getting herself all in a tither over a twelve year old. They ate lords for breakfast, they could handle Lyra.

Mpangi was waiting for her by the dining hall entrance, he hated being late. He liked to arrive early so he could assess people and situations as they entered.

She chides him for waiting for her so publicly, he snarls that everyone was already inside.

She takes a deep breath and pushes the doors open, leaving them open as she glided into the room. She tells herself to keep her eyes ahead at high table as that was where she was headed, but she also can’t help but move her eyes around the room to gauge everyone's reaction to her. They all know who she is, naturally.

_See, I've timed it perfectly. Now it seems like everyone has stood just to greet me._

But before long, she is at the steps of high table, and she takes each step a slow step at a time.

At the top step, she hesitantly turns right and looks past all the heads until she sees Dr Carne's hair. She had seen him earlier, very briefly, and he had said he would seat her between himself and Lyra, incase he was needed. Marisa had scoffed at the time, but she is quite thankful for it now.

She looks for Mpangi and not finding him at her side, just spies his tail ahead of her.

He had found Lyra, she could feel it.

_Come back here._

But it was too late, he had jumped up on the chair and from the warmth that coursed through her body, she knew Lyra had seen him.

 _I told you to wait,_ striding towards him.

_I had to be sure you wouldn't run away. She's beautiful, Marisa, and she looks like us._

_Like me, you mean,_ striding towards her monkey.

"Good Evening Mrs Coulter", polite.

"Good Evening Master", also polite.

"Lyra, this is Mrs Coulter, she may be of some use to you".

There was definitely no going back now. She nods at the master before taking her seat next to Lyra.

_Some use?_

_Let it slide, Mpangi. He's just licking his wounds. Don't forget, he never wanted us to have her._

"Oh, hello", her little voice says, it has the same childish ring to it as it did when she was five years old.

_We will make her strong, Marisa._

Marisa nods quietly, not so much interested in what her daemon is trying to tell her, then what her body is doing to her. She is a bundle of nerves, and her hands are sweating profusely. When was the last time she felt like this? "I am not used to the grandeur of this at all", wiping her hands on her skirt, moving her eyes to look at Lyra for the first time in seven years.

 _She looks like a Belacqua,_ she scolds her daemon, nudging him slightly under the table. She doesn't know why, but this makes her feel easier.

~xXx~

By the time Marisa was fourteen, she felt, bar actually doing the act of fornication herself, she was well acquainted with the term, 'lust'. She had understood the glances her stepfather and other men lingered on her were because in their heads they were imagining kissing her or having sex with her. She was unconcerned by this because although they liked to look, she knew they weren't allowed to touch. That was, until she met Gerard Bonneville.

She had only ended up cornered in a room with him because Boreal had said that he needed a favour of her, and that he would repay her more handsomely than she could possibly imagine. She had of course asked him before what he had wanted her to do, and quickly summarised that distracting the man with her conversation whilst Boreal looked for a very special knife was something she could do easily.

It turned unfavourable for her when he suggested he show her something that he thought would be of great interest to her.

Thinking that he was going to show her the special knife himself, she had agreed, imagining her taking it herself for Boreal. She hadn't thought it odd when he led her to the second floor, as it was his gathering after all in his house, and all the other guests, including her parents were just downstairs. She hadn't thought he would be so aggressive and violent to her.

It was Mpangi, that saved her before he could actually force himself on her. Bonneville had shut him away in another room, thinking that it would make her more weak and susceptible to him, but unknowingly to him, daemon separation, was something she had practiced as a child with Bakome; it was an important skill for a hunter to have.

That didn't mean that it didn't hurt because it had been over nine years since she had been on a hunt or had any need to be that far from her daemon. Mpangi had transformed himself into a Golden Monkey, climbing through the vents, ambushing Bonneville's hyena daemon and inflicting irreversible injury as it tore his sharp fangs through her genitals and her back left leg.

Dress torn in multiple places, tears streaming down her face, she grabbed the key out of his jacket pocket and ran for the door.

She dropped the key twice, her hands were so slippery, and her body shaking so much over the fear that he would catch her again before she could escape. In the end, Mpangi unlocked the door and she ran straight into the waiting arms of Boreal.

The authorities were called immediately, and the next day her mother let her sleep as long as she wanted. It was that day she started her bleeding and Mpangi settled as a Golden Monkey.

...

Marisa wakes up in a cold sweat. Her daemon's golden eyes are looming over her. She gently nudges him off her, tired of the amount of times she has told him not to do that.

There is a loud knock on the door and she startles badly.

_It's the wake up call you asked for._

_I'm in Jordan College,_ she recalls in relief.

_You're in Jordan College, and today we take Lyra home with us._

Yes, right.

~xXx~

Marisa's eyes are fixed in a deathly stare on her daemon, who was staring out the airship entrance for Lyra. She is cutting it _dangerously_ close. Either Lyra would make this airship or Marisa would be forced to disembark and drag her daughter out of that college like the unruly brat that she was.

She felt the moment her daemon spotted her, his relief flowing through her, and quickly sat, busying herself with some papers so the girl wouldn't know just how relieved they were that she had chosen to be with them.

Then the girl had spoilt it by talking about that kitchen boy, and Marisa realised that she hadn't come with her to be with them, but to find that boy.

"Lyra, airships aren't the safest places to talk, shh-"

"-But we need to start thinking about-"

"-We're together know", she pacifies, more because she could feel her daemon twitching beside her. "We’ll have plenty of time to discuss whatever you wish. Now, a bit of quiet now would be best".

_She has no manners or respect._

_She will be fine._

~xXx~

_Chastity_

Maman had smacked her clear across her face when she fled Brytain to escape the scandal. She had wanted a hug. She had wanted sympathy, she had wanted understanding.

She found it mildly interesting that she never tried to stop having sex with Asriel, she just allowed the affair to continue, even after Lyra was born. Whilst she didn't believe in blaming the son for the sins of the father, anymore than the father for the sins of the son, or in her case, the mother for the sins of the daughter. She has thought greatly upon the likeness between her own situation and her mother's situation and whether that was why she had been so carefree.

After all, neither her father or stepfather ever found out about Bakome or Bakomito. Bakome's own wife stayed silent throughout the whole affair, because there was no way she hadn't known. Marisa recalls the many times she walked in on the two of them as a child in the act, and they would just continue like she hadn't been there. How many years had Diba knowingly washed the sheets her husband sullied as he cheated on her with another woman?

She did try chastity when she was pregnant with Lyra, despite the increased libido her condition brought, but Edward like to show off his virility, as did Asriel. She found, that after they had gotten her off, she could never fully enjoy the rest of the sex. Although she knew her womb protected her child, it made her squeamish to have those men spill their lust so close to her baby.

'This child is infected by sin'

...

_She's hiding something from us._

_What?_

_She's put something in her pocket that she doesn't want us to know about._

_A child is allowed to have secrets._

_Marisa, if she's keeping secrets from us on day one-_

_\- Enough. It will be fine._ _It is not Lyra’s fault that she has been brought up so uncouthly. It is not her fault she was not my husband’s child. That is my sin._

But nevertheless, Marisa does flick her gaze up to see what Lyra might be hiding. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello :)
> 
> I started writing this about a month ago with so much enthusiasm, but sadly got sidetracked and it has just been sitting on my computer. I decided this morning that I would finish this chapter in honour of the new series starting, so here it is. I think you can tell the section I wrote a month earlier to the sections I wrote whilst trying to make sense of my excited, jumbled notes.
> 
> I do have a structure - there are eight deadly sins in this fic, so there will be eight chapters. It cuts between the present and the past with flashbacks. A lot of the memories mentioned are going to be re-mentioned and explained in greater detail as the chapters progress. My plan is to update at least bi-monthly.
> 
> Until next update :)


	2. Greed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst becoming a new mother to twelve year old Lyra, Marisa considers her relationship with the eight deadly sins. How they have affected her life, and how they continue to affect her daughter.

**Marisa's Eight Deadly Sins**

Chapter Two: Greed

_'Greed', the desire and pursuit of material wealth and/or social value_

Anyone brave enough to ask Marisa when her, 'abhorrent pursuit for material wealth and social gain first birthed', would receive only a serene smile as an answer, and then a heady dose of her perfume as she glided past them, head high. And then would pay for their loose tongue one way or another further down the line.

She knew of course what event it first blossomed from, but it would perhaps surprise people to know that before then, she had no value at all for her social standing or material wealth - animate or inanimate. Some may argue that was because a child doesn't know any better than the circumstances in which they are raised, but she did. As the daughter of the man who gave the tribes people free access to his land and employment, she knew her social standing was different to the other children she played with, and yet except for when her father was home, she chose to live what many referred to as a 'simpler life'.

Dressing with only a cloth around her waist, her 'toys' were her daemon, the nature and children around her. She followed the teachings and rules laid down by the tribe's elders, not because of fear - because she knew that they wouldn't be heavy handed with her, but because of respect. She would always wait like the other children for her elders to eat first, knowing perfectly well she could have taken the first helping of food.

Her mother told her it was after Bakome's departure that 'greed' first blossomed into her life, but she still believed that referring to a six year old's want for her baby brother, best friend and the two people who had predominately raised her as 'greed' was unfair.

She believed the trauma of being forced to leave her farm after her father died, caused the sin to first creep into her body.

It was her place of birth after all, her sanctum sanctorum, her way of life. It was all she'd ever known, not even on a hunt does she think she had travelled further than ten miles from it, and she hadn't wanted to leave.

_'What does he mean my marriage is not valid?! I have the papers!' Maman shouted in French but the man who was speaking to her was English. 'Look', she urged in English._

_'I understand Madam, but I am terribly sorry, it is not valid because he was already married, and his family have decided they no longer want the expense of this farm'._

_'What am I to do? What are we all to do?' She shouted in French again. 'I have a child! My child is my husband's child', in English._

_'Like I said, in the eyes of the law you are not married and your child is a bastard'._

And then it was the sombreness of having to watch everyone pack all their possessions that very same day, and say goodbye to her family. Then when they arrived in the concrete town, having to watch her mother beg -

"- Mrs Coulter", Lyra's voice interrupts her thoughts. "The car has stopped"

She blinks, throwing a glare at Mpangi in the front seat for not alerting her they had arrived.

_I couldn't very well dig my claws into myself, Pantalaimon has done nothing but stare at me this whole journey. It's very unnerving._

_Well if you weren't so cold towards them, maybe he would be less preoccupied by you._

_If Lyra-_

_\- Enough._

Marisa uses her serene smile now on Lyra. She had been giving her the cold shoulder the entire journey here, not that she thinks Lyra had noticed. She’d been too intoxicated by the scenery outside, and she couldn't blame her, the girl wouldn't have ventured much outside of Oxford, and the view was far more breathtaking than rooftops.

Lyra watches her patiently and diligently.

_Completely unaware of how much you wanted to throttle her earlier._

_Yes, well, she's here now. She'll soon forget about that kitchen boy._

_Sure. Just like you forgot Makiese._

_I would say loosing Makiese helped make me the person I am today. Besides, I was left with my mother, and save my indiscretion, we are nothing like her. So, liven up yourself and watch your attitude around our children, and Mpangi, please, if -_

_\- If I don't have anything positive to input, I'll keep my thoughts quiet. Let's get inside, so I can have a moments peace from Pantalaimon's black eyes constantly fixated on me._

She tuts him, but appreciates the softly laid hand he rests on his arm that resonates through to her.

 _This is it,_ becoming momentarily captivated by Lyra's eyes. She had Asriel's brother's eyes. She'll never forget when she first saw them. He had strode into that room, like he owned the place. Tall and handsome. Her eyes had fixated on his tailored, three breasted navy blue suit - because by then, her magpie eyes were attracted to finery. His outfit, his whole demeanour, spoke volumes before he had even said, 'hello'.

_'Father, you didn't tell us our new mother would be joining us', he jested Lord Belacqua before turning to look at her._

_His almond eyes are enchanting, with long eyelashes that had no business being on a male._

_'You've met, Asriel. This is my eldest son, Michael'._

_Michael took her hand and raised it his lips, before placing a soft kiss._

Pulling herself out of her reverie, Marisa nods at the chauffeur, who gets out to open her's and Mpangi's passenger doors.

"Wait for him to open the door for you", she turns to Lyra, because there was no way she would know how to correctly disembark a car, she had seen the way Lyra's eyes looked over it in awe when they first sat. "Swing your legs out the door, with your knees together, take the offered hand and then rise".

Lyra's nose perks up as she listens, but she nods astutely.

Marisa smiles thankfully at her.

_... She has my nose ..._

The moment quickly lost by a car driving past Lyra's passenger door, and Marisa suddenly has a flash of her daughter lying flat on the tarmac. "But, come out this side, Dear. There's quite a lot of traffic". Much more than the sleepy roads of Oxford.

Lyra astutely nods again, and Marisa flashes her genuine smile.

"Lyra", she smiles happily at the girl when they are both out of the car, because at the end of the day she does truly want to be Lyra's friend - as well as steering the girl in the right direction, but only so she can enjoy a life with no limits. "This is your new home".

...

_Her mother violently shook her awake._

_'_ _Maman?' She asked, she had been asleep._

_'Promise me you won't turn out like me. Promise me you will be good'._

_Despite it being dark, she could feel the intensity of her mother's stare, and Tchaka lied suffocatingly heavy over her heart._ _'I promise, Maman'._

_'And that you will respect the Authority'._

_'I will', she answered quickly, still holding her breath._

_Tchaka pounced off her chest as her mother relaxed into the crook of her neck.  
_

_Marisa relaxed with her._

_'You're my beautiful girl'._

_'Yes, Maman'._

~xXx~

"How are you with heights?" She asks Lyra cooly the next day over their half-eaten, neglected breakfast out on her penthouse veranda.

Lyra is hovering _dangerously_ over the veranda wall, seemingly admiring the view around her and unbothered by the nineteen storey drop underneath her.

She had wanted to let Mpangi loose on Pantalaimon, before screeching at her daughter to get away from the unguarded ledge, but decidedly held her daemon and her tongue.

Bakome always used to tell them, 'a good hunter will always catch their prey if they learn to think like their prey'. Study it. Wait patiently, become friends with it and get it to trust you if you can, and then when they are a child in your hands, ensnare them. If that is not possible, the element of surprise when they are most unguarded always worked. They were wise words for catching fresh meat, but they were also words she lived by in almost all her relationships.

"They don't scare me. Never have", Lyra answers.

_'You'll never guess where I found our daughter when I saw her?'_

_She frowned down at Asriel, fisting_ _his hair she had woven through her fingers, but she tempered down her violent urge to pull them out from their roots, because he_ _looked to be at the very end of awakeness._

_Mpangi's head surfaced over the bedsheets, his eyes looking at her warningly._

_She sighed, relaxing her fingers and places a soft kiss on Asriel's forehead, before continuing her stroking of his scalp._ _Her eyes track her daemon's creep towards them, Mpangi's eyes only on Asriel, before he snuggled into his warm skin._

_It only makes Asriel snore._

_She doesn't mind, she didn't need more Lyra material to fill up more of her days daydreaming about her._

_Mpangi however wanted to know._ _He shifted against Asriel, and she watched as his hands grappled closer to Asriel's neck, ready to wring the man awake._

_She placed another soft kiss on Asriel._

_'She was the scaling the roof', he suddenly whispered, his voice jaunty and full of sleep. "If there was any doubt she was my child ..."_

"I used to live on the roof of Jordan College", Lyra continues. "I slept out there every other Sunday".

_That's it, I'm going before she starts talking about her blood sucking parents again, the Count and Countess Belacqua of Transylvania._

"No you didn't", ignoring her daemon.

"I did!" Lyra insists.

She laughs, deciding to let that one slide, who was she to say it wasn't true.

_'You know Lyra, it's just you and me here. You don't have to put on a show or make up stories to get attention', she said kindly to the girl who had suddenly gone very small and red next to her._

_They were having some a hot chocolatl drink before bed, and it had caused Lyra to talk non-stop. She had already made a mental note not to give the girl any form sugar so close to bed time in the future._

_Mpangi had already left the room, no longer being able to listen to the girl's make believes._

_She's delusional, he’d concluded, before leaving the room. She'll start believing her lies are truth and end up in an insane asylum if you let her keep it up._

_They're just harmless stories, Mpangi, she'd chided her daemon. She'll grow out of it._

She on the other hand _mostly_ found Lyra's storytelling fascinating. The girl had a wild imagination, and the sincerity her voice gave to them was truly remarkable. She liked her tale about the Count and Countess.

_Remember that's me and Asriel she is talking about._

The Count and Countess Belacqua were the aliases she and Asriel used to use.

"Roger was there too. On the roof".

Of course. Roger, was never far. "I've got my best people looking for him. We'll find him, Lyra. Soon".

'Soon', a very useful word, you could mean never but it gave the impression of immediacy. It also gave the impression that only the Authority had control over the outcome, so however long _soon_ took, she could not be accountable for it.

"I've never been sure about them - heights", she returns to the situation of Lyra's care-freeness of dangerous heights. "I could never get away from the occasional urge to jump", letting the statement hang.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the distress in Lyra's face as she looks at the ledge with a new meaning.

Marisa smiles internally. Lesson done.

...

_'Maman, when are they coming back?' She whispered as her mother tucked her into bed._

_'I told you mon chaton, we mustn't think about them anymore. They are not coming back to us because they no longer belong to us. We must free them from our mind so we can all live happy lives. You want the baby to be happy, right?'_

_She nodded._

_'Do you know what sin is?'_

_She nodded quickly, wary of Tchaka prowling towards her._

_'Well it is the sin of greed to want something that is not yours. If you cannot learn to forget them, we will all burn in hell because of it. All of us. Even the baby'._

~xXx~

She’d promised Lyra they would lunch at the Arctic Institute, so they walk hand in hand through the busy London shopping streets to more exclusive stomping grounds. Marisa content to listen to Lyra's happy chatter about Asriel. She knew a lot about him, and the majority of what she was saying Marisa knew to be true. Mpangi is perched on her shoulder, and she thought it incredibly sweet how Pantalaimon imitates his form on Lyra's own shoulder.

_Mpangi, look at your son._

But Pantalaimon quickly changes back into a white ermine when he realises Mpangi is watching him.

Boreal's plan had been for her to lay low with Lyra until her work allowed her to go North. She would take Lyra with her, naturally not staying in Bolvanger. The Magisterium always provided a airship for her own disposal so she would commute from Trollesund to the Station when needed.

But Boreal was currently enroute to Svalbard, much to his chagrin and Marisa's amusement as he avoided the cold at all costs. But with her tied to London until the next shipment of subjects were ready to be sent to Bolvanger, it meant he had to engage negotiations on her behalf with Iofur Raknison over Asriel's arrest. It had to be done in person, and as soon as possible.

As reward for Asriel's arrest, she had promised, Iofur, a daemon from an intercised child. 'Re-intercision', as she had coined it in her letter. Promising that _soon_ when her research was a success, he would be the first panserbjorn in history to ever have a daemon.

She knew that Ice Bear's greed for celebrity and to become more human would be too much temptation for him to resist.

She also knew Asriel would hate being locked away. But with the Magisterium hot on his tail, and if even heretics like Dr Carne felt threatened enough to try and poison him... A palace guarded by armoured bears was really the safest place for him.

_'Why would someone try to poison my uncle?'_

_She was trying to put Lyra to bed, despite the girl still being full of questions. She halted. 'Who tried to poison him?' She frowned at her, wondering if this is another one of her stories._

_Lyra looked away from her. 'Just suppose someone did?'_

_Marisa halted Mpangi's advancements towards the girl with swat of her hand. S_ _he's probably just making up stories, she soothed her monkey._

_But what if she isn't? I can think of reasons people would want to poison Asriel. For Lyra to know, it must be someone from the college ...? ...Dr Carne? He supplied. Why else would Asriel suddenly get so angry with him?_

_That is conjecture, she dismissed, looking down at her now upset child._

_How would Lyra know someone tried to poison him? Mpangi continued. Unless she witnessed it herself?_

_She would tear Dr Carne apart if she discovered it were true. Delight as Mpangi slowly plucked each one of his raven's feathers from her skin._

_Or maybe this is about, Roger, again?_

_Marisa blocked Mpangi's thoughts from her mind. She had to concentrate on her child. Was she lying? Was she really just supposing. But what if she was telling the truth...?_ _'I would never let anyone hurt your uncle, Lyra', she offered._

_She must have said the right thing, because Lyra smiled at her as if she had just handed her the sun, moon and stars.  
_

_Pantalaimon in his ermine form, hurried over from Lyra's shoulder, getting so close to her, his little nose sniffing her ... she thought he might actually touch her..._

_But their moment was lost by Lyra's tight embrace._

_Maybe that's all she wanted to know, whether she could trust you?_

But they knew when someone was close to glory, that is when the thieves came, who would do almost anything to obtain it.

_'But how did Gerard Bonneville get the knife?' She asked Boreal._

_'He stole it. He came here to fix the knife and to hide it from those who want to steal it from him'._

_'But why here?'_

_'Because he knows home has the world's finest craftsmen in metal'._

_'How do you know he had it?'_

_'Because the professor likes to boast'._

_'But won't those same people go after you now?'_

_'Not if they don't know I have it, and I won't boast. That's why it must be our secret. You're an accomplice now'._

She added in her letter to Iofur, that she was sure, in his respect for one nobility to another, he would be a most gracious host to Asriel for the duration of his confinement.

"Now, what will you eat?" Marisa sighs when they've sat, looking at the menu. She didn't know if there was anything on here that Lyra would eat. She had observed the girl's tastebuds to be pretty basic.

 _Her_ plan was to lie low like Boreal had said, but in the shadows of civilised society. And it wasn't about showing Lyra off. She knew that a child like, Lyra, couldn't be kept cooped up in a nineteenth floor apartment for however long it would take her scouts to acquire her necessary quota. So yesterday, after she had given Lyra her initial tour of the penthouse, and allowed the girl time to wash, dress, and settle in before their lunch - served with awkward conversation on the different foods that could be eaten whilst on an expedition in the North. Lyra‘d seemed enthralled by the mundane topic, eating very little of her lunch whilst Marisa spoke as eloquently as she could, whilst enthralled with the fact that Lyra was actually here in her apartment having lunch with her.

Then the seamstresses arrived for dress altercations on what she had already purchased for Lyra.

Then she _couldn't_ _resist_ taking Lyra out for afternoon tea. She picked a place that was fancy but not fancy enough to have any known acquaintances gracing the establishment.

Then it was the theatre. Which she reasoned would be dark and made sure to pick a show that had been out for a while.

And it had all been worth it to see Lyra enjoy the fancies of her birth right.

She had already decided if she did encounter anyone she knew, she would simply introduce Lyra as her, 'assistant', regardless if they knew their true relationship. Besides, in the eyes of the law, she was only Lyra's birth-mother, not a parent. Legally, the girl had none.

The Arctic Institute was probably the most low-key place she had brought her to. They were all explorers and scientists. No one here would be reporting anything they saw to the Magisterium.

"I don't care about food", her daughter dismisses easily.

"Well, you might care about food if you were starving".

 _Lyra's not your regular kid you pick up off the street is she, Marisa?_ Mpangi teases.

Marisa playfully nudges him with her shoe, being tickled by his quip.

She has enjoyed her time out with Lyra, but having been used to just she and Mpangi, she found the girl exhausting, and the amount of times _Pantalaimon_ would change his form in not even fifteen minutes! ... She knew it was because the girl was just excited, and she understood that every small thing was new and exciting ... but she was looking forward to a _calm_ weekday routine of schooling.

Although Asriel mostly glazed over the question every time she asked, she knew that there were _many_ holes in Lyra's education, and it frustrated her to no end that he didn't put any of his money towards it.

 _'She's happy, Marisa", Asriel reasoned._ _Her hating the way he always drew her name out when he was trying to get her to agree with his reasoning. "She's much too young to be worrying about all that. Let her be free from those chains while she still can and be a child'._

_'Hmm, I wonder if you would say the same thing if she were a boy?' Knowing that he knew that stroked a, very, sensitive nerve for her._

_'Lyra is my sole heir, just like she is yours. She, will, grow up to do extraordinary things. Just like her parents'._

Of course she wouldn't give any of her money to Asriel, because she knew he would only use it on his expeditions. For all the chat Asriel used to lord about when they were younger about how one's material wealth and social standing was overrated, he certainly missed it once he no longer had multitudes at his disposal.

But, back to Lyra and her education. She _is_ still young. She _is_ very astute and Marisa _is_ confident that with her guidance, Lyra will excel at everything. After all, she herself didn't have a 'proper education' until after she was nine. A fact that only her mother and Boreal knew.

 _No she's not your regular child,_ she agrees with Mpangi, _she is extraordinary._

 _And that's not only because she is our child, or the extraordinary tales she tells,_ he muses.

She smiles, _and now we've got her, we'll make sure she will achieve extraordinary things._

Well, she was extraordinary up until she brought up Roger again. It was time for another lesson.

"Lyra, look around this room. How many women do you see?"

She stays silent, probably understanding her point, but Marisa wants to make sure the girl _well and truly_ understands.

"In every room there are those that would belittle you. With my help they won't lay a scratch on you. For you will have knowledge that they won't. I can teach you to wield power over all of them, but you must let me mould you".

Lyra nods.

...

_'What's the matter child?' Lord Belacqua asked her._

_'I don't want to go inside. Maman says that my father's first family want nothing to do with me'._

_'But you are his child. And you belong here as much as the rest of us do'._

_She bit her lip, not sure. She was certain she would be the only bastard there._

_'You don't have to worry. I won't leave your side, they wouldn't dare lay a scratch on you'._

_She nodded._

~xXx~

She'll never forget the look in Edward's eyes when he first saw her. She wasn't naive to think it was love. She wouldn't call it lust either, it was greed. For she knew how to work a room. She knew how to captivate an audience, and he wanted to be a big time politician.

When Asriel informed her of this, she laughed at him for thinking she didn't know. She knew the sole reason Edward wanted to marry her was to enhance his social standing and material wealth. She didn't care because it was exactly the same reason why she wanted to marry him, that and to get away from the oppressive claws of her stepfather.

_'If you know he doesn't love you, then why are you marrying him?'_

_Stelmaria paced between the two of them._

_Marisa pursed her lips, fearing if she spoke she would burst into tears._ _'Why are you here?' She asked, eventually. It was her wedding day and she had invited him, but she meant why had he got Stelmaria to track her here._

 _She watched his eyes roam over her._ _She was scantily dressed in what was supposed to just be for Edward's eyes._

 _Perhaps he thought she owed him because his father took her under his wing, moulding her to be the accomplishment she was?_ _'You're too late, Asriel'._

If you wanted to talk about greed, her stepfather had always wanted to keep her all to himself. If there hadn't been the expected social obligations of different social gatherings and schooling, it would't be an overstatement to say she would hardly know life outside the Delamere Mansion. Then there was Europe for Gerrard Bonneville's trail, because there was no way, Victor Delamere, was not going to make sure that the harshest punishment be inflicted on the man for touching what he considered his property.

And he had only agreed to send her to Oxford for her schooling because Asriel's father had suggested it so publicly, so it was then socially expected of him to do so, because how much more prestigious could you be than to be able to afford to have your _daughter_ to have overseas schooling in Oxford, the epicentre of academia. However, when her proposal for St Sophia's College was accepted, he refused her enrolment.

So as her last year came to a close at St Augustin's Secondary Boarding School for Young Ladies, Boreal arrived out of the blue back in Oxford, very much like a knight in shining armour after so long. Almost two years had past since his last promise to show her the wonders of the knife, but she hadn't forgotten and ran off with him as soon as she could.

_'Come back with me', she pleaded to Boreal._

_'I thought you were happy here. Is this because of Grinstead?' He joked._

_'No this is not because of Grinstead', she snapped. 'There is a satanic war going on out there, Carlo!'_

_'It will never reach here, Marisa. People are fleeing here to get away from it. They'll never bomb Oxford, they want to make this city their headquarters'._

_'It's already here!' She cried._

She wakes up in a start.

Her heart racing, the phantom air raid siren still ringing through her body.

She could feel Mpangi hovering over her again. _You're at home, in London. In our world._

Marisa nods. They kept no staff in the evening, so this was usually the time he roamed the apartment to his fancy, or do any reading she tasked him with. The fact that he was watching over her meant he was worried about her.

"I'm fine, Mpangi", although she doesn't know why she spoke out loud. _Could you get me some water please?_

_Boreal's black hand, enclosed her white hand, his thumb gently rubbing the skin. 'You have nothing to worry about'._

_'I'm frightened for you'._ _It wasn't only the threat of bombs that had her frightened, it was the threat of being taken in the middle of the night because material wealth and social value no longer mattered if you did not fit into the parameters of their 'master race'. Boreal thought that the title and the wealth he had procured from himself here would protect him, but it hadn't protected those people fleeing Europe, and she_ _had seen the way that man had looked at Boreal the other night at the party._

_'I will be fine', he assured her. 'It will soon pass'._

_She shook her head, no._ _It wasn't just that man, or this particular war. Her studies of that world showed a long history and it infected every corner..._ _'I can't stay here. This world is plagued with so much greed and wickedness ... it makes me sick'._

She gulps down the water Mpangi brings here.

 _I shouldn't have lost my temper with her,_ thinking about how she reacted to Lyra's innocent story as she helped her bathe earlier.

_Don't worry about it, Marisa._

_I hurt her,_ digging her nails into her own arm as well as Mpangi's.

_Hardly, and she forgave you easily._

_Because she's a child! A child easily forgives! Especially those she has no choice but to rely on!_ Digging deeper into their skin. _It’s not Lyra’s fault she succumbs herself to her ridiculous make-believe. If I had agreed to be her mother ... If I hadn’t let material wealth and social value become my sin ..._

She takes a deep breath in and out before releasing her hold on them. _U_ _se_ _the vents_ , she strokes her daemon's face. _Check that she's OK for me._

_I've already ch-_

_\- Check again!_

When she hears that he's done as she asks, she gets out of bed to change the nightdress she's soaked through. Before she puts a new one on, she switches on the light to gaze at her naked body in her vanity mirror.

_'Your femininity is your greatest asset, did you know that?' Boreal's voice hissed in a way that she wonders if it was Liviana that actually spoke._

_She had lost count over her sixteen years of life, the amount of times her mother had said that to her._

_His lips fell back on her mouth, and his hand creeped up under her skirts._

~xXx~

_Charity_

Lyra had been living with her for one month now. They had found a comfortable routine together but the girl was obsessively curious, had boundless energy, and liked to test her patience in a way that was childish, innocent - and sometimes funny - but found Marisa slowly unravelling. She had already perfected her voice and her glare that indicated to Lyra she would no longer stand her nonsense, which Lyra _wisely_ understood and remained quiet until Marisa invited her into a conversation again.

It was difficult being a mother, being Lyra's teacher, and sometimes friend. Whilst also attending selective social events she could have Lyra accompany her with, _and_ managing the Oblation Board all on her own. She didn't know _where_ Boreal was, but she needed him. Not only his ear, or him in her bed, but she knew Lyra would find him fascinating, just as she had, and although she would _never_ leave Lyra on her own with him, she did trust him with her, and she would welcome the respite.

She almost tore the shop assistant's head off when she had to correct her the other day through gritted teeth that Lyra was her assistant not her daughter.

_'Well aren't you a very lucky girl', she’d cooed condescendingly at Lyra, her incessant butterfly daemon fluttering around her daughter's face. 'I hope you thank the Authority for this nice lady's charity'._

Mpangi had wanted to pull his wings apart, and she had almost screamed at the woman that the girl was _not_ a charity case, she was her daughter. She instead complained to her superior in private over her heinous untoward behaviour, and suggest he fire her.

"I will be having a party for a few friends - and fellow explorers", she adds the last bit for Lyra. There weren't any coming but it would keep Lyra entertained and make sure the girl talked to all the guests, not just the ones, 'that looked interesting'. Lyra's words not hers.

Not that the lie really mattered, she hadn't told the girl because she feared her overexcitement when it was still at least a couple of weeks away, but they would be heading North soon, and although she had attended a few, she really had been lacking in her social obligations this past month because of Lyra, and it was time she showed her face and showed off Lyra, as well as have some fun before the grim work schedule.

Lyra of course complains the expensive tailored satin teal dress, which will be beautiful when it's finished, is too restrictive, before making a snide comment about how she likes running around. ‘Not attending her stupid parties‘, isn't said, but she can read between the lines.

This spikes Marisa's nerves because it's not like she hasn't purchased clothes for Lyra to run about in, neither has she taken her to as many social events as she has wanted to attend, _and_ she does take the girl to a local swimming pool every weekday afternoon after her classes, and to play racket ball twice a week! "The clothes you wear determine the way people see you", she says sharply.

It was that shimmering golden dress that had gotten Edward's attention, a shiny golden ticket.

It was that white lace bodice and stockings that had so visibly ravaged Asriel before he ravaged her with it on.

Lyra wisely stops her argument, but she can see a sulk start to show and she walks over to the mirror to show the girl her reflection.

She likes it.

Marisa smiles, touching the girl's curled hair and wonders if Lyra has noticed how similar they look. At first she couldn't see it, and she doesn't think it's because Lyra is much more polished now. She thinks she had just convinced herself for so long that her daughter looked like Asriel, but Mpangi was right, she was almost the spitting image of her.

She left the girl to admire her reflection.

_'Is all this really necessary', she giggled as Boreal nodded to the shop assistant that he also wanted the dress she’d suggested for her. It was the tenth one from just this store._

_'It will go with your whole blonde bombshell Jean Harlow look'._

_She touched her new hairstyle self-consciously. She liked it, but she was still getting used to it. 'Marilyn Monroe darling’._

_'Oh, if that is the look you're going for, then surely we must purchase something more risky', he wiggled his eyebrows._

_'You are like, La Baker, with your pet monkey', the shop assistant supplied in English._

_'Such high praise', she replied in French._ _This is why she loved Paris, no one second guessed her daemon, especially when he wore a diamanté collar._

_'I didn't know this is how we built back my respect and political ground', sarcastically._

_'Of course it is', inspecting another dress the shop assistant handed him. 'Don't play dumb with me, you know just as well as I do. They have to be attracted to what they see on the outside before they think about what's going on in the inside. Am I right?' He said the last sentence in French to the shop assistant._

_She nodded._

_'The papers will love you', he continued in English. They've always spoken English with each other, despite French being their mother tongues. 'Women will want to be you. Men will dream of making love to you, and they are who will support you as you re-climb up your social ladder. As long as we keep it on the right side of chic and demure and only save those special numbers for special events._

_Marisa gave him a gentle kiss on his cheek. Thankful for having him as a friend._

"It will allow me to wield power", Lyra says in a voice she guesses is supposed to mimic hers.

"It will allow you to wield a cake knife more like", Pantalaimon.

Marisa chuckles easily with them.

"If my uncle could see me like this..."

"- Oh, he'll be delighted, I'm sure", Marisa interjects their private conversation because she couldn't help the hilarity of it and perhaps also if she thinks Asriel would approve, she would have no more arguments with her - on this topic at least. That is certainly how she's won her over mathematics, navigation and celestial geography.

 _Not_ , Mpangi graces the room.

_Oh, you've presenced us with your black cloud. It was getting a bit too bright and cheerful in here._

She had almost bought Lyra a Magisterium pendent the other day whilst out shopping, but Asriel would surely have her burn in hell if he ever knew she had put one on his child.

...

_'Why didn't you bring her to me?' Marisa snapped at Asriel, her palm striking him across his face._

_She was at the end of her tether after worrying sick about Lyra's welfare during the flood. Asriel recounting their baby's perilous journey in the clumsy hands of two children, had just told her the part about some, 'Queen of the Faeries', breastfeeding her daughter, and she couldn't control herself anymore._

_'Because you can't protect her, Marisa. They won't let you keep her'._

_She could. If he had brought Lyra to her like she instructed, she would have hidden them until the water levelled and she would have gone through the portal with Lyra to disappear. As had been her original plan._ _But she couldn't tell Asriel that, so she just wrung her hands._

_'The witches prophecy-_

_'- I don't care about what your new lover whispered to you while you fucked her', not being able to keep the bitterness from her voice. 'It's lies, Asriel!'_

_Mpangi jumped on her shoulder and screeched at him for added emphasis._

_'I believe the witches prophecy to be true, and so do the Magisterium'._

_'Lyra, is not that child!' She cried, taking a seat on the worn out couch._

_'My Love ... I shouldn't have told you', she allowed him to rest his hand on her back and comfort her. 'They're not certain, but the witches say due to her parentage, the circumstances of her birth, and what's happened in her life so far...'_

_Marisa sobbed. 'Why did you have to kill him, Asriel?'_

_'Why did you tell him he could have my baby?' He bites back. '... Jordan College is the safest place for her', much softer. 'If she is that child, she will be protected by scholastic sanctuary. The Magisterium will have a harder time getting to her'._

~xXx~

Marisa was in her study, she had neglected her paperwork to look at a photogram of her and Lord Belacqua, Lyra had made an expression earlier that reminded her of him.

_'I knew your father'._

_She looked up and blinked at the greying man that has taken a seat next to her._

_Who's he? Mpangi emerged on her shoulder._

_I don't know, do you recognise him?_

_He looked like every other fat pig that used to litter that clubhouse back home._

_Mpangi, be kind._

_It was becoming a real struggle for her to keep the darkness at bay in her daemon. She was only thankful that he now hardly ever spoke his thoughts out loud._

_'You're Charles Van Zee's daughter. I recognise you from a photogram he once showed me of you'._

_Her heart fluttered, and she knew if Mpangi could still change, he would be fluttering as a butterfly all around her chest._

_'I am Marisa Delamere, Victor Delamere is my father now', she corrected, just incase he was in ear shot._

She and Lyra had been going through her guest list for the party when she pulled the face, because she didn't like one of the names she saw.

_'Must we invite him, he is so boring, and smells funny', scrunching up her little nose._

_Marisa swallowed her smile. 'Hmm, but he does know all about shrunken heads'._

_Lyra's eyes go wide, 'shrunken heads?' Astonished. 'What's that? Is that like a severed human head? I've seen one of those'._

_'You'll have to ask him. You see Lyra, you never know who someone is, or how they might be valuable to you unless you speak to them. Did you know that same night I first saw you at Jordan College, Dame Hannah Relf, the head of the women's college, St Sophias, was there?'_

_Lyra frowned thinking about it. 'Maybe... But, I only really remember you, Mrs Coulter'._

_Her insides puddled and it took her a moment to re-steel herself. 'Well I'm very good friends with her, we used to...' Should she tell Lyra what an alethiometer is? 'We used to be on the same research group when I was at St Sophias, where I discovered and explored wonderful, groundbreaking and fascinating topics', she pauses, she could tell she had Lyra's rapt interest, 'and went on many adventures', pausing again for effect. 'She told me that if you studied very hard, she would have a place for you at St Sophia's College when you're older'._

That wasn't really how the conversation went, but she was now glad that she hadn't mentioned the alethiometer because Lyra knew about Dust! As Asriel's child, she didn't know why she was surprised but she couldn't be talking about it.

 _'_ This child is infected by sin'.

And that pathetic lie she came up with about a scholar from New Denmark. Asriel should have been more careful around her!

Most people think that Marisa did her work at the Oblation Board because of her greed for power and the material wealth it brought her, or because she was cruel and cold, but the truth was the Oblation Board was her charity project.

She laughed the other day when Lyra asked her about the high political tension with the Tartars invading Muscovy. She had wanted to tell her if she knew the true evil that has spawned from greed outside of her world, how it destroys that planet... Then she would not call what was going on in St Petersburg a 'war'. That's why she allowed Lyra to stay in Jordan College, in _her_ world.

True, here exists hierarchies of sex, wealth, and power, but it is a mustard seed to the extremeness of inequalities she has witnessed in Boreal's world; the diseases, the famines, the homelessness, their concepts of caste... At least Sex, wealth and power are all that really divide people in her world, and everyone here is united under one Authority. Asriel calls it oppressive, but she calls it a necessity for peace, because from her findings to have more than one ... just insights more war.

That is why intercision must be a success, for perpetual peace. Yes, she won't deny she enjoys the perks of her material wealth and her social standing, she worked hard for them. But, her work on the Oblation Board, she does that for Lyra, so that her daughter may grow up in a world not overrun by satanical greed.

" _Mrs Coulter!_ "

She turns at the hurried knocks on her study door, quickly putting away her papers before opening the door.

"Lyra?" She asks, Mpangi jumps on her shoulder and she glances to see he has left the vent door open in his hurry to get to her.

_What is it?_

_I don't know?_

_You're supposed to be watching her._

"Look at this!" Lyra says in delight, an excitement that reminds her of when the girl was five years old, as she rushes towards the living room, Pantalaimon swooning around her.

She smiles, "I'm right behind you, Darling".

...

_She was a bundle of nerves. Lyra had just said goodnight to her, and she had to schmooze in the Drawing Room. She didn't want to. She wanted nothing more than to take one of those magical sleeping pills she gets from Boreal's world, but she had social appearances to keep up. That, and she had to go see a woman and her fox about a certain kitchen boy she wasn't going to have running around her expensive apartment._

_'Marisa, how lovely to see you', Hannah greeted her. 'You look lovely as always'._

_'Hannah, you look exquisite', she returned the compliment, taking a seat next to her. 'I am terribly sorry for not managing to speak to you during dinner'._

_'Nonsense. Lyra is a delight'._

_Marisa smiled, appreciating the delicacy in which she delivered her comment. 'I'm afraid I have a terrible favour of you. It does concern the welfare of the child though, and I wouldn't ask if-'_

_'- You want to use the alethiometer again?' Quietly._

_'If it's not too much trouble', she whispered._

_'5:00 am at mine. It's best that you arrive and return before the sun rises'._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't done it myself yet, but apparently you can discover your daemon on the BBC website. https://storyplayer.pilots.bbcconnectedstudio.co.uk/experience/HDMadventure
> 
> Thank-you so much for the comments, kudos and reads.
> 
> It was a bit longer, every time I start a new chapter I always think I won't have enough to write, but it always flies away with me.
> 
> Until next update!


	3. Gluttony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Although Lyra couldn't read the alethiometer when she was at Mrs Coulter's flat, after their daemons fought in episode 2 the spindle started moving and I decided to explore the notion that the alethiometer started answering her questions on who Marisa was and where Lord Asriel was through dreams.
> 
> Whilst becoming a new mother to twelve year old Lyra, Marisa considers her relationship with the eight deadly sins. How they have affected her life, and how they continue to affect her daughter.

**Marisa's Eight Deadly Sins**

Chapter Three: Gluttony

_'Gluttony', overconsumption._

_Who is Lyra Belacqua?_

_She had used her whole hour at Hannah's just trying to get the damn alethiometer dial to move. But for the sake of pride, she_ _made sure to put a spring in her step as she disembarked her fellow researcher's - sometimes lover - narrow staircase._

_Hannah sat at her small breakfast table submerged in papers, her round glasses perched perfectly at the end of her nose. As the Head of St Sophias she would be entitled to lodgings at the college, so she wondered if the older woman simply preferred the privacy of her own home, or she was still involved in Oakley Street and used her position at St Sophias as a guise ..._

_The American looks up as she enters the threshold but Jesper continues reading a document._

_'All done', plastering a smile on her face, but she thinks Hannah clocked how it trembled and fought._

_Hannah only nods._

_Outside, she stomps her way back towards Jordan College in the still darkness of the early morning. She had already shrugged Mpangi off her shoulder, finding his weight both crippling and suffocating._

_Marisa -_

_\- Don't! Blinking back angry tears._ _She couldn't read the alethiometer anymore. She couldn't even get the fucking dial to move! Because there was too much sin in her!_

_It's not sin, Marisa. You're out of practice and your mind is at unease._

_I am over-consumed. My sins ... They are too many._

_It's no-_

_She turns on her daemon and growls. It is sin! I have over-sinned so much I am infected by it! It's ruining my body! Disintegrating my charms, and now I can't read the bloody alethiometer! There is no good left in me, Mpangi, only evil! She_ _collapses to the tarmac and starts retching, as if her body thought it would purge her._

Marisa awoke and immediately went to the vanity mirror, removing her night dress to analyse her naked body ... the abuse she has caused it over the last decade - and it wasn't all the sex. It wasn't just perils of lust either, it was the rot of all her sins starting to seep through to her exterior.

How beautiful her nakedness used to be ... it used to be intoxicating, and now... now it was becoming ugly and old.

She liked sex, and enjoyed the fact she wasn't tied to just one or even a few lovers, and although she mainly allowed that desire to be exercised in Boreal's world, she's had more than a few lovers - not including Asriel and Edward - or Boreal, he didn't count, in this world. But except from her _very_ exclusive masquerade sex parties she sometimes hosted with the artists in her life, her conquests were mostly for social gain.

But she doesn't even think it is those such escapades that are adding to cause this advanced rot in her body.

It was the perverseness of her lust, and how she found it a game. It was the exquisite burning danger of just letting all socially accepted inhibitions go, and just be wild and dirty. The more sinful, the more she got off.

It was muffling screams into his wife's pillow while being bent over by the ageing Lord Cristobel as he fucked her in their bed. Not because he was a particularly good lover, but because she knew after he had finished she would then go downstairs to sit next to Mrs Cristobel, juices still spilling out of her and staining the woman's expensive, plush settee, as she graciously sipped a glass of her vintage Tokaji. It exhilarated her to no end. Of course Lord Cristobel would be useful to her and Boreal in the continuing future.

It was watching those selected few, overzealous, supposedly, 'men of the cloth', as they lost themselves inside her hands, cunt, or mouth, pleading a mantra to her as if she were the Authority herself. Only for them to emerge bewildered and confused after they'd finished their deed. They were putty in her hands afterwards for fear that she would tell, which was again very useful to her and Boreal.

It was standing scantily clothed in her marriage underwear in front of Asriel and not moving to cover herself up.

_'How did you find me?'_

_'I had Stelmaria follow your scent', Asriel's voice like cool silk against her wanting skin._

It was allowing Asriel to ravage what was supposed to be Edward's property, and not giving a fuck if anyone stumbled on them.

It was being naked underneath her wedding dress because her underthings were too tarnished to wear, and still marrying Edward whilst Asriel's seed festered inside her and stained her thighs.

It was pulling Asriel back into that dressing room, because she wanted him to spill inside her at least one more time before her freshly wed husband did.

It was attending to her wifely duties with Edward at night in their bed, whilst also seeking Asriel out whenever she could, so he could push her skirts up against the nearest surface and be balls deep inside her as he fucked her greedily, whether that be a desk, bookcase or his cold attic room at Jordan College.

It was her body's constant hunger to be on her knees at Asriel's mercy, hands gripped around his ass as she sucked hungrily on his cock or balls shoved deep down her throat, desperately waiting for his come to clog her oesophagus; the only nourishment her body wanted and craved...

Marisa gives her body one more disgusted glare, before starting her day.

...

_'You're back!' She exclaims excitedly as Boreal strides into her bedroom. All through her first year at St Augustins, she had been hoping to see him in Oxford. All the times she was out at a party or wandering around the city with her friends, she would always keep an eye out for him. She asked anyone who she thought would know about his whereabouts, but no one seemed to be able to tell her where exactly he was. She had been starting to get worried._

_'You'll never guess what, Delamere?' Resting his weight on the arm of the chaise-lounge she was on._

_'What?!' She asks, because news Boreal brings is always exciting. Whether it be some intensely fascinating or seriously important person whom he has met, something heretical he has been studying, or gossip that only a handful of people knew and she would now be one of them. She can't wait to tell him that she'd read all the books he lent her on Rusacov's Particles. It was very advanced and had taken her much of the year to get through the texts, but she found it all fascinating, and spoke at great length about it with anyone who knew anything about it, except the one person she had really wanted to discuss it with, him._

_'They made me a Lord', he grins, and she thinks how she has never seen him look so excited or uncomposed. 'The King of Brytain himself made me a Lord, Delamere, can you believe that?!' He fists the air, looking up to the heavens in triumphant, 'and it's all because of you', kissing her cheek._

_'Is it because of the knife?' Even in the secludedness of her bedroom she whispers._ _He had shown her the knife the day after ... that night._

 _His smile widens. 'Next time we are both in Oxford, I promise you, I will show you the glorious wonders of the knife, but I warn you', leaning in very close to her, his daemon, Liviana, emerging from where she always hid in his sleeve._ _Her forked tongue flicks against the skin of her cheek._

_She jolts._

_'Once you've taken a bite, you'll never want to stop eating'._ _Then before she knew it, Boreal's lips were on hers._

_'I thought you said we weren't friends like that?'_

_'We're not. I just thought it was time you were properly kissed. I have a gift you', pulling out a velvet box from his pocket._

_She opens it immediately and he laughs at her enthusiasm._ _'Boreal, they're simply beautiful', she says, staring at the very large diamond earrings.  
_

_Mpangi jumps on her shoulder to have a better look.  
_

_'Are they real?'_

_'Of course. Only the best for my accomplice'._

_She walks over to her vanity, handing her daemon the pearl earrings her stepfather bought her, and puts on her diamond drops._

_'Delamere', Boreal signals her over. When she's close enough, he pulls her hard on to his lap, so hard she can feel his penis poking into her._

_She gasps._

_But he only pulls her harder against him._

_Although she has never done this with anyone, freshly sixteen, she's not prude to what he is doing to her._

_'Your femininity is your greatest asset, did you know that?'_

~xXx~

When at home in her apartment, Marisa likes to start her day early before any of the servants arrive with yoga and her boxing bag she had a craftsmen style the last time she was in Firenze. This morning when she entered the room she normally used - which now also housed her grand piano - she was not entirely surprised to see Lyra already waiting for her in her racketball outfit.

_'What are you doing?'_

_She physically jumps out of her skin._

_Lyra is frowning at her from the doorway._

_She breathes out slowly, plastering a warm smile on her face. She should have expected this. Ever since Lyra had caught Mpangi alone in her study without her - which she of course denied - it seemed to be the girl's mission to catch them out again._

_'Are you some sort of witch?'_

_'Good heavens, no', she laughs, getting up from her yoga mat to smooth Lyra's bed hair._

_'Why else are you able to stay so far away from your daemon?'_

_Because child, I am so rotten inside I don't feel it. 'My daemons right here, Lyra', she smiles sweetly._

_Mpangi jumps on to her shoulder._

_Lyra's face doesn't look convinced, as she now stares at what she's wearing, her little hand moving to feel the lycra of her workout leggings. 'I've never seen material like this before, Mrs Coulter', her brown curious eyes looking up at her._

_'Are you hungry, Darling? Shall we see if I can put together some breakfast for you?'_

_Lyra pushes past her into the room, and she has to quickly grab Mpangi's tail to stop him lurching on the girl. She didn't know why she thought food would convince the curiousness out of her._

_She watches Lyra feel the material of the boxing bag, before looking at the yoga mat on the floor, before looking back at her._ _'What was that strange dance you were doing?'_

_'It's not a dance Lyra, it's called yoga. It's a form of exercise. Just like you do swimming to make you strong, I do yoga'._

_She watches Lyra mouth the word._

_'They use this to train for the illegal fighting. Why do you have one?'_

_'Have you ever been kissed, Lyra?'_

_Lyra's face instantly goes red, shaking her head, no. 'That's grown up stuff, Mrs Coulter. For when you're married'._

_'It is, Lyra, but sometimes men try to kiss you who are not your husband. This is how I protect myself'._

_Lyra nods. 'Or for fighting Tartars?!' She suddenly turns on her full of excitement, her mood going from curious to unrestrained in the blink of the eye._

_She can't help but laugh, walking over to her daughter who looks up at her now with adoration. She cups her cheek. 'Yes, or for fighting Tartars'._

At first Lyra wasn't taken by the yoga, but when Marisa had mentioned that it originated from India, the girl put a concerted effort into it.

_'My grandmother was from India, you know', she told her later over breakfast the servant prepared. 'My father and uncle were born there too. That's why I go so dark when I spend lots of time in the sun'._

She had wanted to ask Lyra if she knew where her mother was from, but she hadn't trusted Asriel not to have told her the truth. It was just like him to fill his lie with truths. And although Lyra hadn't asked her where she was from yet, the girl was very astute and seemed very curious about her.

She had shown Lyra yesterday how to use the boxing bag, demonstrating a few movies. She watches her use it now whilst she finished off her routine, and it appeared that Lyra was trying to beat Satan itself out of it. "Lyra?" Because she didn't want her ending up with bruises.

But Lyra either didn't hear her or was ignoring her.

 _She's crying,_ Mpangi mystified, his tail swaying slowly as he watches.

"Lyra?" She asks again, moving quickly from the mat. The girl was fine just five minutes ago, giggling as she had tried to copy her moves on the floor next to her.

But Mpangi was right. Lyra's face was set in anguish and there were tears streaming down her face as she threw herself against the bull hide.

"Darling, what's wrong?" Trying to pry her away from the equipment, but Lyra fits against her as she desperately tries to lay one last punch, kick, or _scratch_ on the bag.

She does eventually manage to pull her away, but Lyra immediately turns into her, her fingers grabbing her in a frantic embrace, pushing her smaller body into her own, like she is trying to make them one again. Her initial worry for Lyra quickly turns to perplexment, and she goes very still not knowing how to react to this assault - which couldn't exactly be called assault because Lyra wasn't trying to hurt her - at least she didn't think.

She looks over at Mpangi for rationale, but he seems to be just as bewildered by their daughter's behaviour, and is almost _cowering_.

Then the girl suddenly goes limp and pulls away from her, busting out loud, ugly tears that stream out from her eyes, nose and mouth.

~xXx~

_The Arctic Institute had become her new sanctum sanctorum. The topics discussed were always engaging, she never felt she had to put on a show or was on show, and the only thing she had to explain herself for were her theories and opinions. Best of all, no Magisterium or Boreal._

_'Word has it you're in bed with the Magisterium. Quite literally', Asriel's voice speaks from behind her._

_The hairs on her back raise at the sound of his voice so close to her, and pausing her actions she looks into the mirror to see him stood behind her. She had felt Stelmaria's soft tail brush past her earlier._

_There had been a talk this evening headed by Leonard Broken-Arrow about his expedition mapping the currents of the Great Northern Ocean. She had excused herself from a small discussion she was holding for what she thought would be a brief trip to the powder room, but it appeared now it wouldn't be._

_'Apparently you have for sometime. I hadn't been aware'. He was lent against one of the stalls talking to the ground, but his eyes now meet hers in the mirror._

_She feels Mpangi jump off her shoulder._

_Stelmaria sits like a bronze statue next to Asriel with her eyes shut._

_'That's because, Asriel, you have no regard for anything that isn't solely about you. Even if it is right in front of you', she answers cooly, continuing her toilette._

_'Lyra asked the Master about you'._

_She felt Mpangi's harsh flinch in his prowl towards Stelmaria._

_The one thing he would always have over them._

_She extended her hand out for Mpangi to take, and he climbed up her to watch Asriel over her shoulder. She planted a soft kiss on the side of his face._ _'It's interesting you should mention her. When was the last time you saw her? It's not like you can very well ask me the same question, is it?' She turns around to face him._

_'You were the one who said you wanted nothing to do with her', he answers easily, pushing himself off the stall door._

_Her skin betrayingly prickles excitedly at his move, her anticipation only just being overpowered by Mpangi's nails digging harshly into her._

_'What was it she asked about me?'_

_He stops his walk towards her. 'She asked him, where exactly it was that her mother had gone'._

_She holds her breath. Was this when Asriel would say that he wanted to take her to see her little girl? Was this when he said he had changed his mind and decided that it would be best for Lyra to be with her. All he had to do was relieve Lyra of her scholastic sanctuary, she was sure she - or if not her, Boreal - had enough influence to allow her to keep her. But just as soon as she thought it, she knew it wouldn't be so. Not even a year had passed since she rejected his marriage proposal, he wouldn't have forgiven her that easily._

_'I informed the Master that if Lyra ever enquired of our whereabouts, to simply tell her we were absent. I guess I had been waiting for when there could be an us, when I thought there would be an us', Asriel swallows hard as he looks away from her, and her heart and eyes momentarily falter for him, before re-steeling herself. 'But I now finally know what I'm going to say to her. I'll tell her that her parents, the Count and Countess Belacqua, died in an airship accident, because as far as I'm concerned, Marisa, that is whence we died'. He walks towards the exit door before pausing. 'How could you? After everything they've done to us'._

_..._

She breathes out the smoke from her cigarette as she draped lazily over her veranda wall, gazing at her expansive and expensive view of London at the start of the working day in her world. She had the highest apartment view in all of London, and most likely Brytain, and she knew she had paid dearly to obtain it playing carelessly with her own as well as others' lives.

She flicks a heavy amount of ash off her cigarette, and watches it start it's float to litter the people underneath her.

She takes another long drag. It was a dirty habit sometimes indulged when in Boreal's world. After she had quietly closed the door on Lyra's bedroom, having finally managed to calm down the girl's hysterics and lull her to sleep, she very gratefully remembered she had a packet in her locked treasure trove cupboard of various valued items she'd collected and kept in stock from Boreal's world.

And thus had been how she spent the rest of her day so far. Not even bothering to change out of her lycras - which she always hand washed herself to avoid detection - merely wrapping a long dressing gown around her, and contemplated the many ways in which she had over-sinned in her so far life, and the different people her throes of lust, greed, sloth, hatred, envy and pride had affected ... The packet _had_ been full, now half resided. It didn't concern her how it charcoaled her insides, she was already black inside. A dirty habit for a dirty person.

Crushing that cigarette, she added it to the pile and fishes out another one, briefly looking over her shoulder to check a servant wasn't watching her, before digging out her lighter from her pocket. She had tried to ask Lyra what had gotten her so upset, but she'd only cried louder.

She lights her cigarette and takes another long drag, holding the smoke in her lungs. She has concluded that perhaps her greatest sin and most distructable perverseness in life has been denying Lyra her mother. Denying her a family. As a mother, what greater sin was there?

Perhaps, as a citizen of her world, people would argue that other actions of hers have caused more damage. Or would argue that Lyra was better off without her. It hurt, but she knew Asriel to be one of them. He only reached out to her because he was desperate, wounded by Dr Carne, and summarised there was no one else he thought he could trust to protect her.

But regardless of all that, Marisa is _sure_ , that if she had agreed to be Lyra's mother all those years ago, whatever was grieving Lyra now, wouldn't be. It was sobering, yet also oddly enlightening to acknowledge how her life has caused her daughter such immense pain.

~xXx~

Lyra awoke not long after ten in such a fantastic mood, prancing on everything, singing about afternoon tea, the theatre, the Arctic Institute and other fanciful things she had decided they were going to fill their impending weekend with.

Marisa, in a most undignified sag on one of her living room settees still wrapped in her dressing gown after having chain smoked a whole packet of cigarettes, almost strangled the girl for the long, festering self-critque and loathing she put herself through on that roof whilst her daughter slept. Whom she earlier thought was broken beyond repair.

_'Darling?’ Fixing Lyra's hair in front of the vanity, now having both dressed for their delayed start to the day. 'Can you tell me what happened earlier? What upset you?'_

_Lyra shrugs, 'oh you know, just hormones, and stuff', she dismisses perking her nose up and looking her in the eye in a notion that Marisa has learnt either means she is learning something new and therefore storing it in her brain, or she is hiding something._

Later in her study, Marisa and Mpangi are still thinking about what could have upset Lyra so much instead of the Oblation Board paperwork she should be completing for the Cardinal's final approval. She swears she spends more time thinking about Lyra now there in only a 10 metre distance between them, then when there was 100 miles.

There is a short knock on the study door. She thinks by the sound of it, it's her new butler, but just in case, she opens the door with a smile.

Cold, pale blue eyes meet her eye level.

"Yes?" She asks testily. If she could work and play just as efficiently without servants, she would.

"A Father MacPhail is requesting an audience with you, Madam".

The hairs on her back stood to attention, just as she could feel her daemons had. "Very well. Send him up now", closing the door in his face. She was grateful that Mpangi didn't start examining why Father MacPhail was visiting her in her _own_ apartment, out of the blue like this. She left the clearing away of her papers to Mpangi because she was certain at this moment his hands were steadier than hers. She took the moment to clear all self-doubt from her mind.

_'You are my clever, beautiful girl, Marisa, and I know you will achieve spectacular things'._

She walked out to greet him.

"Lyra, I have some guests arriving. Can you please stay in your room'.

_Is it her he's come for her?_

_Lyra is not that child._

_It has been seven years since the alethiometer gave us that reading, Marisa'._

_He wouldn't dare, Mpangi. He wouldn't risk us ruining him._

~xXx~

When Marisa realised Father MacPhail's visit wasn't about Lyra, she tuned out of the conversation. She had done too much self wallowing today. She decided that soon as he left, she would start Lyra on her studies and forego the child's swimming lesson. She didn't want Lyra to think she could throw a fit every time she wanted to escape her studies.

Father MacPhail disgusted her, and it wasn't because of his reptile like disposition, it was the fact he was the only person Boreal had to slip a pill to as she was having no luck wooing him her usual way. Still, he was the primary ear to the Cardinal, which definitely had its uses.

_'You will do this for me, Hugh, or I will tell the Cardinal about our indiscretion'._

_He scoffs arrogantly but she can still detect his fear. 'Who do you think the Cardinal will believe? A fallen woman like yourself who already has a reputation for trouble, or me, a trusted servent'._

_Cellular phones from Boreal's world were really quite the thing, and they were the most wonderful handbag-size device for Mpangi to take inconspicuous photographs from whilst she was in the act with her prey in very compromising positions._

_She leans so close to him she could kiss him, and she grins as she sees him try to fight doing so himself. 'Try me. I dare you'._

It was because she wasn't concentrating on what Father MacPhail was telling her that she heard the murmuring outside.

 _Lyra!_ "Excuse me", she quickly dismisses herself.

Of course Lyra and Father Garrett were engaged in conversation just outside her study door, when she specifically told the girl _to stay in her room!_ "Lyra, run along the grownups are talking". Immediately berating herself for saying Lyra's name. There was a chance she hadn't introduced herself. There was an _unlikely_ chance either man wouldn't equate this child in the comforts of her own home - and not locked away in the cold like the other children in her life - as her own.

...

_She was late, and she didn't know whether it was Edward's or Asriel's doing, but she wasn't worried. She had booked an appointment at a family planning clinic in Boreal's world, already calculating it would probably take her a week to recover, which if she did there, would only be one day lost here._

_She lost the steady Saturday morning crowds at the Botanical Gardens and made her way through to the abandoned part of the greenhouse. But no matter how much she searched and walked through the now invisible slither of the gateway - it was sealed closed!_

~xXx~

_'He's a failure of a man, and a failure of a father!'_

The bath was steaming and Marisa plunged her head under, trying to rid the voices from her earlier confrontations. Today had most definitely _not_ been a good day... An abysmal working day, an abysmal day of self-loathing, and a cataclysmic parenting day. So many grievances since before sunrise to sunset. She was beyond exhausted and she was officially unravelled.

_'Whispers become weapons in the wrong hands. Now I am sure you will agree the Magisterium is more valuable than any of us. Any sacrifice that we have to perform to preserve it's power ... we do.'_

She blew all the air out from her lungs. Lyra. Father MacPhail's warning to her before he left _._ Was it really just a warning for her to be more covert with her operating of the Oblation Board? Or was it because of those _wretched_ whoring witches whom had made a puppet of her lover, and whose _bloody_ prophecy had put a noose over her child's head since infancy! She didn't know how many times she has screamed at Asriel that Lyra was _not that child!_ That the Bodley alethiometer had not mentioned the witches prophecy at all in relation to Lyra. But it was too late for reason for Asriel. The witches had him fooled and driven so mad with vengeance against the Authority, it was surely going to be the death of him. If she ever got her claws on one of them, she would take great delight in making her pay for her mad lover and the twelve years he had locked away their daughter in a walled prison out of her reach.

_'What?' Lyra answers aggressively, her stature also brutish._

Marisa had wanted nothing more than to strike manners into her child. No one had _ever_ spoken to her in that tone, not even her own mother.

_'I'm sorry if I was short in front of them-'._

She had tried to first apologise, before disciplining Lyra but ...

_'-You lost control'._

_'No, I wouldn't say I lost control._

With everything stewing inside her, it had _not_ been the right time for Lyra to challenge her like that.

_'You were angry I could see it'_

_'No I wasn't angry'_

_'And you still are'._

Oh, Lyra my Darling, you have no idea what anger looks like on me. What she had ordered Mpangi to do to Pantalaimon was gentle.

_'Stop it! You're hurting us!'_

For a very sterile moment it intrigued her to know that it made a difference when it was your own child your daemon was inflicting pain on. It was almost like Mpangi's fingers were not only grappling Pantalaimon, but her own heart and lungs.

_'My mother, who was she?'_

Still submerged in her bath water, Marisa's lungs start choking for air, but she keeps her head under. It would be quite an unbecoming way to be found. She wonders where they would lay her body to rest. Her father's old estate in Zyaire she hopes.

She wonders if Asriel would bring Lyra to visit her grave.

She wonders if they would weep.

Mpangi pulls her harshly out of the water by her hair.

 _She's an insolent little brat, Marisa!_ Yanking her hair in emphasis. _It was time that she learned some discipline._

After her very unladylike, frantic recapturing of her breath, she leans over the bathtub to stroke Mpangi. _Thank_ - _you for doing it instead of me._

_You must write to Hannah tomorrow._

She nods, continuing her pet.

...

 _She looks over to him from where she's sat._ _'I've just realised, Boreal, you're my snake'._

_He looks up from where he is proof reading her proposal for Bolvangar and smiles at her._

~xXx~

_Temperance_

_One week later ..._

Yesterday, she sent the children of the two women who nannied her daughter to Bolvangar. One of the children being her daughter's best friend whom she _promised_ she would find for her, whose mother until six weeks ago, continued to watch her twelve years later. Find she did, she just had no intention in returning him to her.

Yesterday, she had written both the children's names on the official stock list. Had looked them both in the eyes at the holding bay, seen their own mothers' eyes plead back at her, and had not felt any sort of remorse for them being there. For the journey they were about to embark on.

It could have been an overconsumption of envy, because their mothers were able to nurse her daughter on account of her being barred to do so. It could have been an overconsumption of anger, because she felt their mothers hadn't protected her daughter adequately enough - which had truth, if it hadn't been for Asriel, her daughter probably would have been dead twice over before she saw seven months because of their incompetence.

But that was yesterday. From today onwards, she would be better, _for Lyra_. They journeyed North next week, and that would be their fresh start.

_'That's lovely to see', she smiles at Lyra working hard at her desk. Mpangi was right, she only needed some discipline. She had probably been coddling the girl too much. She had to keep Dust out of Lyra, which meant she had to be sterner with her._

When Pantalaimon and Mpangi touched, it was like her holding her baby for the first time all over again.

...

_Once in her arms, she huddles her wailing babe close to her chest, shushing her._

_The wails immediately quieten and she starts nuzzling against her skin._

_She strokes the tiny snow leopard cub curled around her daughter's neck, and such an overwhelming wave of happiness surges through her that she has to fight really hard to not let the tears of joy streaming down her face erupt into uluations._

_This was hers and Asriel's child. And she felt nothing but serenity and love._

~xXx~

"Lyra, do I have something on my face?" She asks because the girl's staring was becoming too uncomfortable. They were enjoying their lunch outside, and whereas she usually adorned this time with piles of paperwork, with preparations complete for Bolvanger and encouraging news from Hannah that the alethiometer was showing the same three symbols for Lyra, Marisa found that for the first time in weeks, she had the time and energy for her daughter. "Eat Lyra", she urges gently. "I shan't let you go swimming if I don't feel you've eaten a substantial amount".

The girl picks up her fork and delicately prods the poached egg as if it is some sort of bomb. Marisa suspects she hadn't liked how the yolk of the last one had bled all over her plate. "It's only Mrs Coulter that I've been having these very strange dreams lately".

"And...?" When she doesn't continue.

"How did your husband die?"

Sat on the seat next to her and tentatively experimenting with his new closeness with Pantalaimon, Marisa moves quick, clasping Mpangi’s hand stroking the white ermine, before instructing him to wait for them in the living room. She didn't want any repeats of last week. "What a very morbid question", closing the veranda doors and sitting back to her lunch.

Lyra turns from watching Mpangi watch them through the glass. "I only ask because I think I have a memory of him wi-".

" - That's quite impossible, he died long before you were born".

"Oh".

Pantalaimon, spooked by hers and Mpangi's earlier movements, now scurries out from Lyra's collar transforming into a raven - which reminding her of Dr Carne, more than irks Marisa - and taps his beak on her plate. They both exchange a look, before Lyra's eyes are back on her. She has told Lyra countless of times before that tables are not play areas for her daemon, especially when they are eating. But she also wanted them to properly enjoy their last fanciful weekend in London, before they entered the rugged wares of the North. So she lets it slide.

"Do you have any children, Mrs Coulter?"

"Only the one I have hidden underneath your bed", she laughs. Not liking Lyra's questions at all, but also not wanting to hinder progress. Which after a week of a subservient Lyra - minus the occasional sparring match - with little to no fire in her demeanour, this spark of curiosity was progress.

Lyra chuckles at this too, picking up her knife to quarter her egg. She brings a cut piece to her lips, only to place it back on her plate.

Marisa groans inwardly.

"In another dream, which I think might also be a memory. I heard these two scholars talking about me when they thought I wasn't listening. One of them said, 'that's Lord Asriel Belacqua's bastard, you know the famous explorer'. When the other asked what I was doing there, he said it was because Lord Asriel blew my mother's husband's brains out and they wanted nothing to do with me?"

"You do tell the most wonderful stories, Lyra", she laughs, trying to put as much lightness in her voice when really she wants to interrogate as to who these scholars were that spoke so carelessly around her. "But you really shouldn't say that word, it's not nice".

"But that's just it", she persists. "I'm not sure they are just stories. Another one, which I'm _certain_ is a memory was when us college kids were playing wars on the Gyptian kids. I had Tony Costa's face in the dirt. He was angry about that because he is much bigger than me. But he said how he heard even my own mother hated me and wanted nothing to do with me because my father killed her husband. He weren't able to say much else because Ma Costa gave him a good hiding in front of everyone", she pauses looking at Marisa, before pushing away her plate and rubbing her arms. "Those two are the clearest which is why I think they are a forgotten memory, but there are many others all jumbled and not very clear. Some of the things I've seen I don't understand and don't want to understand. Some are really scary and horrible, with lots of people and things I've never seen in my life. But all the dreams, they mostly seem to be about you, sometimes Lord Asriel and myself. Only I'm not in it, I'm sort of watching it".

Marisa pushes her plate of food away having lost her appetite, and regards her fraught child and her plea. She can feel and see Mpangi pacing behind Lyra’s head. Was there a chance that Lyra knew the truth all this time and had simply been playing them...? Her reaction to finding out about Asriel had _seemed_ genuine ... What changed in the last week...? What had Lyra found in her apartment...? And where had she found it? If she knew the truth, was she merely looking at her to admit it...?

 _Or maybe someone has whispered something to her?_ Mpangi supplies.

She had been very careful about who she had around Lyra and she never left the girl alone.

Getting up, she leans on the table next to Lyra, tucking a loose curled strand behind her ear, being careful not to touch the pine marten wrapped around her neck like a scarf. "I don't know what to tell you Lyra -"

"- Tell me how your husband died", she snaps at her, before quickly shrinking in her seat. "Won't you please tell me", blinking back tears, and very much reminding Marisa of the expression she used to pull as a baby every time she had to leave her and Asriel and return to Edward.

"Lyra", she gazes intently down at her daughter, cupping her cheeks in both hands, using all her will not to cry in front of her as she had done last week.

"Or did he also die in an airship accident?" Her mood flipping back to anger.

"The answer to the question I think you're trying to ask me is, no, I'm not your mother. I can't have children. A witch cursed me when I was child, you see -".

Lyra looks crestfallen, pulling her head out of her hands, pushing her chair back -

"- I would show you the scar, but it's in a very sensitive place for me to show you right now".

Lyra pauses, frowning over her body.

Marisa can almost see her little mind working as she tried to figure out where it might be.

"How did your husband die?" Lyra persists.

"A hyena ate him. The same hyena who fathered your friend, Roger. His name was Gerard Bonneville, but he's dead now. He killed my husband in vengeance for me putting him in prison many years ago when I wasn't much older than you. He attacked me you see", not knowing whether she really wanted to be telling Lyra about this, but she was getting older, it was time she learnt that not everyone is your friend. "He also attacked your poor Mrs Lonsdale, Roger's mother".

Lyra's face screws, "Mrs Lonsdale isn't Roger's mother. Roger is an orphan like I a- was".

"I promise you, Lyra, she is", she sings. She knew Lyra would chew on that information like a tough over-cooked steak. Hopefully move the interest away from her...

Lyra shakes her head at her, no. "You're lying", she stands to accuse her.

"Why would a lie, Lyra?" She laughs, adamant in keeping cheerful, because it was much better than her being irritated.

"Because Mrs Lonsdale would have told Roger if she was his mother, because that is what mothers do".

"Not all mothers get to keep their children born out of wedlock, Lyra. Even when they want to. And sometimes, like your friend Roger, children are conceived in violence. Do you know what I mean by that?"

Lyra's frown deepens. She stays silent, but Marisa sees understanding in the girl's eyes.

"Nothing you will ever have to worry about, my Darling", she cups her cheek, before gently kissing the frown off her forehead, feeling Lyra shiver at the contact.

"Do you think -"

"- No I don't think", she answers automatically, giving her forehead another kiss. "Your father is not that kind of man".

"But did he kill my mother's husband?"

"You'll have to ask him the next time you see him. Lyra, were you listening when I said, 'our origins don't define us, it's what we do with what we have?'".

Lyra shrugs.

"Well it's been quite an emotional lunch, and I suggest that we turn it around by getting a change of scenery and preparing for our trip North next week".

She hadn't planned on telling Lyra until before the party tomorrow, as an incentive to make sure the girl was on her best behaviour, but she very much needed cheering up now.

~xXx~

Marisa pushes Lyra's bedroom door open, the mug of hot Chocolatl she had prepared for Lyra in one hand and her daemon's hand in the other. She had knocked but it went unanswered. She took in the empty stripped messy bed, the covered vents and her rearranged furniture which was constructed into a makeshift den, but she didn't hear the excited chatter she had expected to. "Lyra?"

There's whispering and shuffling before Lyra's little head pokes out of the sheeted den entrance, Pantalaimon sat on top of her rag curls ready for the party tomorrow.

"May I come in?" Smiling at how Lyra's eyes bug as she drops to crawl in and join her. "Well, this is cosy". Mpangi follows in afterwards with Lyra's hot Chocolatl. "I made you an evening snack, but it seems like you already have that department sorted", noting the small cakes on a chair seat - the same ones the restaurant served at Afternoon Tea today. She takes the mug from Mpangi and gives it to Lyra. "Best to drink it whilst it's still warm".

Lyra nods, taking a sip. Knowledge that she would be going North next week had brightened the girl's disposition immensely but from her eyes and posture and fleeting _looks_ throughout the rest of the day, Marisa could tell that she was still hurting. She was hoping the sugar would have the same affect as it did on the first night.

"Did you and Pantalaimon have fun rearranging my furniture?"

"I'll put it back", she goes to move.

Marisa rests a hand her thigh. "I'm not angry. I like it. Daemons are wonderful companions when you're young".

"Pan will always be my friend", she says with an air of defiance.

"I'm sure he will".

"Was there anything else you required of me?" She asks when she's finished, looking up at her with her sad brown eyes. She still had blue eyes when she was taken from Asriel, but it's the same eyes she makes right now when she would cry for her as a baby.

Marisa takes the mug from her and places it on the chair seat, patting the place next to her.

There was movement underneath Lyra's collar and she gave a wary glance at Mpangi behind her, but did as she was told.

Marisa had already noticed Pantalaimon's lump in Lyra's night shirt. It was rude, but she let it slide. "Darling..." The girl's eyes turn to hopeful. "It is time I asked you to forgive me for setting my daemon on Pantalaimon last week. It was wrong of me. Will you forgive me?" She asks, wondering if Lyra knew how truly unprecedented this was.

More movement underneath Lyra's collar, as well as a shot of hurt and a flash of tears in the girl's eyes, but eventually she nods.

"I'm very glad to hear that', kissing Lyra's cheek.

_That's not what she was hoping to hear._

_I know, but what she wants to hear, I can't say to her yet._ _Besides, this was Asriel's lie, he is the one who needs to clean up his own mess._

"Mrs Coulter, do you think if Lord Asriel lied about being my father, maybe he lied about my mother being dead? Maybe I will be able to find her?"

Marisa sighs, putting an arm around her, and giving her forehead a kiss. "Lyra... for what it's worth, I want you to know if I could have had a child, I would have wanted that child to have been you".

Lyra nods stoically.

 _That didn't work either,_ Mpangi.

But Pantalaimon's little white ermine head pokes out of Lyra's collar before crawling completely out of his confines. Standing on his hind legs, he bows his head, which Marisa gently strokes. Lyra sniffs, before relaxing against her.

"Do you want to see what I've got here for you?" She says taking out her childhood cricket music box. "I used to have it as a child to help me sleep", resting it on another chair seat before opening it.

Cricket sounds echoed in the small tent and Marisa was transported back to Makiese's family tent in Zyaire and all the times she would sneak out of her own house at night to sleep with his family.

"It's wonderful", Lyra looks at it with wonder, before moving to place a kiss on Marisa's cheek.

Pantalaimon jumps from her shoulder onto Marisa's lap. His eyes gaze up at her before turning into a miniature Golden Monkey. He then turns to see if Mpangi is watching him - which he is - before settling back on Lyra's shoulder in his new form.

Lyra shifts even closer to her, so Marisa briefly rests her head on hers. "I'm glad you think so. But I have one other surprise for you...", deciding it was also time she well and truly removed that sulk out of her daughter. Acting quickly, she creeps a hand underneath Lyra's knee, so that she falls on the cushions underneath her. Then she starts tickling her everywhere.

Lyra's limbs fly all over the place almost ruining the structure as she quickly succumbs to Marisa's deft fingers, shrieking and laughing in glee.

Pantalaimon quickly changes into a puppy and prances around Lyra's head yapping at them excitedly, his little tail on overdrive.

Marisa finds herself laughing too, getting absolutely intoxicated on the twos' shared joy. And although he doesn't join in, she can feel Mpangi watching them raptly, she feels the warmth inside him. So she continues ticking the girl until there are tears streaming down her face and she is begging her - through shrieks of laughter - to stop.

_..._

_'I think you're daemon's magnificent, and he has such an interesting name. M-pan-gi', Asriel sounds it out slowly._

_'Mpangi isn't his real name, it's just what I call him. It means, 'friend', where I'm from'._

_..._

_'Maman, why couldn't have we just moved with the tribe?' Dropping the blue balloon she was given._

_'Because we didn't belong with them, mon chaton. You don't belong with them. Here, surrounded by all these nice things, this is where you belong. It would have been wrong of me to keep you with them'._

_She turns her face into the soft bedding, tensing when she hears her mother move._

_Her mother's hands are on her, but they are tickling her all over._

_She tosses and turns in laughter._

_Her mother's hands don't stop tickling her until she feels as light as her balloon._

~xXx~

Waking up the next day cramped but wrapped in love inside her daughter's make-shift den, Marisa contemplated temperance whilst she watched Lyra sleep peacefully against her chest. How positive a reward this was after just one day of practicing self-restraint, being humble and asking for forgiveness.

During the party she watched Lyra with such adoration as her girl behaved beautifully with all her guests. She loathed to admit it, but she felt what all those women had prattled about at length, she felt fulfilled and truly accomplished, and instead of concentrating on her guests, she envisioned wonderful days, weeks, months and years ahead with Lyra.

She kept a watchful eye on Boreal with Lyra. Just as she had anticipated, Lyra seemed to find him fascinating and was talking his ear off. She wondered what it was they could possibly be talking about because Boreal also seemed interested in what Lyra was saying and even _smiled._ She let their conversation run for five minutes before intervening, asking Lyra to help serve drinks.

When she sees Lyra is fine distributing the drinks, she approaches Boreal.

"Interesting conversation I just had with your girl", he speaks when she takes the seat next to him.

"Oh yes?" Liking the sound of 'your girl'.

"Yes", Boreal turns to look her in the eye, but he does not look happy. “All talk about Dust, the General Oblation Board of London, and her father - who blew her mother's husband's brains out before killing her - being in the North with ice bears, but that I would know all about that because I was there".

 _"What?"_ Standing up to go find Lyra.

"So you didn't tell her?" He follows her.

"Of course, I didn't", she snaps back, not caring about the attention she is attracting. "She says she's been having these strange dreams a- whose that with Lyra?"

"She's a journalist".

The moment she realised Lyra had abandoned her, she physically felt her heart depart her body to rush after her, because without Lyra, it had no desire to stick around for Marisa.

She tried to breathe and catch her breath, all the while Mpangi screaming and screeching at her like some wounded animal for her to do _something_ to bring them back. But her brain knew what her heart had tried to forget, her sins were too many, and with Lyra left any notion that temperance would save her.

"I thought this might make you feel better".

She looks at her box of toys in Boreal's hands. "That depends, is it for your pleasure or mine?"

"Yours of course".

...

_'I've lost it. Marisa. I've lost it’, Boreal was still frantically grabbing at her as she closed the door on her study. She saw that more than a few eyes from her party had followed them and collected in the corridor._

_'Your return is long overdue'._

_'I've lost it', he repeats._

_'Lost what?'_

_'The knife! I've lost the knife!'_

_She tenses. 'Lost, not broken? The doorway is still open?'_

_He nods, yes._

_She relaxes. 'It's not like you could use it anyway. ..._ _Where do you think you lost it?'_

_'I don't know ... I went to this party - in the other world - and I had it before I went, I know I did because I checked before I went in, but... I lost track of myself. When I finally remembered to look for it a few days later ... '_

_Boreal’s tastes And partying were becoming far too excessive. The shoe eventually had to fall._ _She surveys the frenzy he's worked himself too. Livina is coiled tight around his neck like a choker and he's crying. She doesn't think she’s ever seen Boreal cry._ _She opens her arms for him.  
_

 _To which he crumples himself inside of._ _'What am I without the knife?'_

_She kisses the top his head. 'The main thing is it's only lost, not broken'._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably don't have to but I feel I need to mention this anyway, because it made me uncomfortable and itchy writing it, I have zero negative feels towards people who smoke or obviously the bodies of anyone who have played Mrs Coulter - she is just wallowing in her self-loathing. Everyone is beautiful.
> 
> I remember in the secret commonwealth mrs Lonsdale told Lyra that bonneville had actually forced sex on her whilst outside the mansion in belle sauvage, which shocked me but I thought I would link it to the roger storyline.
> 
> Until next update - which will probably be after Christmas. Despite the year, the festive season is still hectic :)


	4. Sloth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally got round to finishing another chapter. I've been enjoying reading all of your stories in the background. 
> 
> Whilst becoming a new mother to twelve year old Lyra, Marisa considers her relationship with the eight deadly sins. How they have affected her life, and how they continue to affect her daughter.

**Marisa's Eight Deadly Sins**

Chapter Four: Sloth

_'Sloth', failure and/or disinclination to act appropriately in specific circumstances due to_ _carelessness, cowardice and/or complacency._

Marisa woke up naked and uncovered, stretched out on her back in a star shape.

Other than the morning light blaring through her drawn curtains, the first thing she registers is how much she aches, all over.

Her room feels cool against her and that's not just because of the coolness of the silk sheets she's lying on top of. She lightly trails her hand down her goose-pimply skin, resting it near her pubis. Her fingertips gently outline her tribal scarification.

She swallows, feeling the awful tastes descent down to her stomach.

_'Will you show me your witch scar?'_

_'I said it was in a sensitive place', she frowned._

_'Please', Lyra's large, brown hopeful eyes look up at her in a manner she hasn't shown in weeks._

_'Alright. But this is our secret'._

"You look like a Tracey Emin installation".

Of course Boreal was still here.

She wonders what time it is before remembering, she doesn't care. She looks for her daemon and sensing him above her, tilts her head up to find his golden eyes watching her steadily from where he's snuggled against her hair.

He is the picture of apathy.

She starts stroking his luxurious fur.

"Rumour is the Gyptians have your girl. I've seen to it that finding her be the Magisterium's top priority, I assure you no expense has been spared. I'm confident we'll find her soon, and I will personally see to it that your perpetrators will have the utmost severe punishment placed on them".

Marisa reaches for her daemon and curls up in a ball with him petting him diligently, appreciating his soft, warm fur against her cool, sore body. It had been two days since Lyra ran from her.

"It took some work. They weren't happy at all with how you dealt with matters at Jordan College".

Marisa tenses - Mpangi opening his golden eyes on hers - before both relaxing. They don't care. Their storming and then her subsequent order to raid Jordan College they day after Lyra disappeared had not been her finest moment. Not only that, it entirely used up all her energy. But she'd wanted to punish Dr Carne. To make him feel even an ounce of what she was feeling, of what she had felt all these years he'd kept Lyra from her, so for that reasoning she was glad.

She can feel Boreal watching her from where she pictures him sat; full suit and airs on her chaise lounge, legs crossed at the knees, broadsheet open, his impatience with her growing by the second. She doesn't care. He can waste his day in that chair watching her.

However when she hears him eventually move to leave her bedroom, she suddenly remembers - "Boreal", wincing. Her jaw _hurt_.

She hurt even more trying to walk over to him.

Maybe they over did it.

He helps her before stroking her cheek. Liviana emerges out of her hiding place, her forked tongue flicks against Marisa's cheek.

"What do you see?" She doesn't ask for truth, she knows Boreal's honesty. Not like Asriel, who always said her beautiful.

She feels Boreal's hand trail down, giving her neck a good squeeze, trailing further down her décolletage until he rests on a breast. "You're still Venus emerging out of her clam", pinching a nipple between his fingers.

...

_'So what do you think?' She heard Boreal's voice behind and smiled. She turned briefly to see if any of the other small, elite, guild of 'explorers' they were travelling with were with him._

_It was just him._

_Which was a first this trip. She liked his friends, which she guessed were now her friends too, but she could relax when it was just the two of them._

_'I think it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen', looking adoringly back at the statue 'La Liberté éclairant le monde' and wished they had more than an overnight stay in this new and exciting city that was literally being built in front of her eyes. Not like the_ _old ruins Boreal had shown her so far._ _She could feel Mpangi nose-to-window as he stared at Her in awe from their quarters she had left him in to get a closer look._

_'Really?' Boreal leaned into her and she appreciated his warmth as it was cold out on deck. 'More than the Eiffel Tower, the Sistine Chapel, Michael Angelo's 'David', Botticelli's 'Venus', the Colosseum, the Acropolis, the Pyramids of Giza?'_

_He was bragging. 'Immensely. Not that you've taken me to see the Pyramids of Giza yet'. She was very interested in seeing how structurally similar this world's 'Ancient Egypt' was to Yambe-Akka._

_Yambe-Akka ... Her mother. Her smallest brother. Lord Belacqua. Michael. Asriel... She had left her world in a flurry of excitement with only the clothes on her back. She had bid farewell to no one. Boreal said time worked different here, slower. How long until they started looking for her?_

_'All in good time, Delamere. There's so much of this world to see'._

_She thought of her oppressive stepfather and the degree he would not allow her to obtain. She thought of her s_ _tagnant society back home that had no desire for innovation and progress, where she wasn't free to do anything unless a man allowed her permission. She thought of Boreal who asked nothing of her except friendship and adventure._ _'And I want to see it, all of it. If I never go back it will be too soon'._

~xXx~

Their storming of Jordan College had well and truly used up all their energy as Marisa missed her departure day North, and then let the days after pass her in a careless haze. It'd caused Boreal's ever composed demeanour to snap.

He struck her clear across her face, coiled his hands around her neck and squeezed.

_'There are more important things at hand than your daughter!'_

His violence surprised her - not that she cared, she thought - staring at his handiwork in her vanity; it was past midday but she was still abed.

He didn't understand that she couldn't leave. Not without Lyra. Not without knowing where she was and whether she was safe. What if she returned to her apartment and found her gone?

Why _hadn't_ she gone after Lyra herself that night she'd first gone missing?

Why, when she first realised she had run away had her immediate thought been that it was probably for the best.

Why had she sat and waited for others who did not love Lyra to look for her instead?

Pride and anger had been her mistress that evening, and now she found herself stuck in another trance of deep reminiscence and sloth- rare as the sin was in her life.

She threw the vanity chair at the mirror, hoping the shards would cut her. When they didn't, she drew a bath, leaving the shattered pieces for her servant to clear.

...

_'Good God! I would have had to have killed the help', Asriel exclaimed when he finally returned to his bedroom. She was still lying on her back with just her bandeau on - uncovered - on his four poster bed. She doesn't know how long she had been staring at the frayed material in the top left of the otherwise perfect canopy drapes, wondering what Asriel had done to cause it._

_'I can only imagine the unsightly view', she tore her eyes away and tried to look at him over her bump, but it was in vain. 'I suppose I look like a beached whale'._

_'Seriously Marisa, if it were anyone but I who had walked in, news of our affair would be all over Brytain by nightfall. I'm sure you've already set tongues waggling turning up here as pregnant as you are'._

_'Enough with the dramatics Asriel and help me up'._

_Mpangi perched himself on Asriel's shoulder and she tried to send them both a frown of disapproval, but it was quickly overpowered._

_Asriel returned her grin. Kissing her on the lips, before dropping further kisses down her neck. For the second time that day he pulled up her bandeau, slipping it off her easily and taking one of her darkening nipples between his lips and teasing it. His fingers easing between her legs. 'You are far from looking like a beached whale", his voice hot against her skin. "You are beautiful, as always. If not more pregnant with my child'._

_'Asriel'._

_His light sea-blue eyes met hers._

_'It's not good for me or the baby to be on my back for this long'._

_Stelmaria jumped on the bed and helped Asriel gently sit her up. He placed soft kisses on her bump whilst she rubbed her head against it. Those two_ _were certain the baby was his, but it just as easily could be Edward's._ _'What are you both going to do if this baby turns out to be my husband's?'_

_Asriel stopped his caresses and looked up at her seriously. 'Then I would have to kill him'._

_Marisa let out a laugh, 'Asriel', she stroked his cheek._

_He laughed._

_'Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope it is his. It would make everything a lot easier'._

_'One would be surprised you were concerned considering your recklessness'._

_'The Belacqua Manor was as good as my home as it was yours during my youth, nothing is untoward'._

_Asriel rested his ear on her bump, but their earlier antics had already rocked the baby to sleep. 'Not long now until we find out whether you have indeed spent these last eight months with a penis permanently inside you'._

_She rolled her eyes._

_'You are prepared for the birth?'_

_She nodded. As ready as she ever would be to birth her body's conqueror with the average head circumference of a pawpaw._

_'And if it favours me too greatly-'_

_'- Asriel, there's no too greatly. Either the baby will be born with a baby snow leopard for a daemon or my husband's. I shall know instantly and proceed accordingly'._

_He nods uncertainly._

_'You are prepared I take it?' She asked after the silence between them became too unnerving for her._

_'I have secured a nurse, she has prepared the cottage nearest Binsey lock - she is discreet', he assured, sighting her frown. 'She's a Gyptian that moors on my land there, she had a son last year who is due weaning. The King of the Western Gyptians himself introduced her to me. They will protect our child'._

_'Well I guess it is the least they could do considering you allow them to squat for free, not to mention the uproar you caused over that Watercourse Bill', offering him another fond smile. She had been so proud of him when she'd heard._

_He shrugged like it's nothing when it would have meant everything to them._

_'Just how many of your fellow members of the aristocracy forgot to invite you to their society parties this year?'_

_'I wouldn't have gone to any of them anyway. Besides, they already hated me. To them I'm nothing but a barbaric, bloodthirsty Tartar whose mother used her cunt to infiltrate the Brytish aristocracy'._

_'Hmmm', curling a finger under his chin to lift his face up. 'Not with those blue eyes you're not, and who could forget the adorable mop of white blonde hair you had'._

_He grumbled, pulling his chin out of her grip and back on her bump. 'If you think that's the reasoning behind my acceptance and my brother's refusal as a member of Brytish parliament, then I wish it were him instead of me who favoured my father's colourings. Michael would have achieved so much more than I am'._

_'Is that what you believe or are you fishing for compliments?' She placed a kiss on top of his hair. 'Besides, it has nothing to do with looks, where one's from, or where one's mother is from, it has to do with compliance. I think they feared Michael a radical'._

_'And what am I? A puppet?'_

_'No', she said, running her fingers through his hair. 'But you are richer than the King of Brytain himself'_

_'Ah', flicking her a suspicious look, 'so that is why you're here'._

_She grinned back at him._

_'Never pegged you as one to read gossip columns'._

_It was Edward who told her. Reading the broadsheet aloud to her at breakfast was part of their routine. His mother had told him it would make the baby smarter. She mostly ignored him relying on Mpangi to do the listening for her, humming at appropriate parts whilst she read a journal or worked on one of her own papers, but she always took notice when the news concerned Asriel._

_'Fat luck money has gotten me', Asriel continued. 'Dead parents. Dead siblings. All this space for just myself - the rare times I'm here. No friends or family to share it with - unless you count my impending bastard child's arrival, whom I will have to keep a secret and hidden for fear of waggling tongues. Whom I may never be able to fully claim as my own'._

_Marisa flinched at his wording._

_Asriel placed a firm kiss on her bump. 'I'm venting, sorry'._

_Marisa didn't know if he was apologising to her or the baby._

_'I feel like my father prepared me for every circumstance in life, except this', her hand fell off his head as he sat up, 'and my brother dying', grabbing her fallen hand. 'God, how I would give all this up if I could have my brother back. He placed their entwined hands on her bump, 'not the baby, that's mine'.  
  
_

_The baby may well turn out to be his, but it would never be his heir, and she is sure Asriel would want an heir now that he was the only one who could carry on his father’s name. ‘You know if you want friends, you might try talking to people and then not carelessly dismiss them every time they don’t agree with you’._

_Asriel grumbled. ‘Who needs friends? I’ve got you haven’t I? And you carry my family’._

_‘He was a good man your father'._

_Asriel flopped behind her, and Stelmaria filled the vacancy by stretching herself across Marisa's lap._

_She felt Asriel's finger paint patterns on her back._ _'It incenses me to no end that the law dictated my father be buried here. The only people at his funeral who liked him let alone loved him were my brother and I. At least in India he could have been buried next to my mother and my sister, his life celebrated amongst friends'._

_She placed what she hoped was a comforting hand on his thigh before quickly removing it. She had been with Boreal, in the other world. 'It is a shame everyone thought him a traitor when he returned. He was only following his king's orders marrying your mother and loo-'._

_Asriel suddenly locked a fist around one of her wrists ' -my father loved my mother'._

_She stared him down until he eventually loosened his grip, flinging her hand far from him._

_'I think you should be getting back to your husband. Where does he think you are again? St Sophia's welcoming lunch for new students? Childing before you'd even finished your degree, sterling beacon of hope you are Marisa'._

_She dressed silently but didn't give him the satisfaction of making a hurry of it. She didn't want him to think his words affected her._

_It was better this way, she told herself, as she checked her reflection in his small mirror._

_She hesitated at the door before she left though, 'Goodbye Asriel'. She didn't know when she would see him again, if ever. There were precisely three reasons for her coming to Oxford so heavily pregnant; to pick up her degree, to say good-bye to Asriel, and to cross over into Boreal's world. She wasn't giving up her baby._

~xXx~

Over a week had passed since she'd lost Lyra, and Marisa sat alone on what was once Lyra's bed in the darkness of what was once Lyra's bedroom. The Gyptian raids hadn't solved anything. What if Lyra was seriously hurt?

She strokes Lyra's bedding. She'd handpicked it herself. She'd thought Lyra would like the fur. Lyra deserved to fall asleep wrapped in furs. As a Lord's daughter, that is how she should have spent every night, wrapped in furs and silk sheets. Not the dingy, cold, thread-bare cotton attic room Asriel had her in! If - she flinches, feeling like she was being watched.

She pauses before turning, anxious that it is a servant that has caught her so vulnerable - but it is just Mpangi at the doorway. How could it be that she could no longer feel when her own daemon was in the same room as her?

_This wallowing is beneath you._

_Shall I start calling you Boreal?_

_We are a Kind of action_ _,_ closing the door from watchful eyes and waggling tongues.

She tore Lyra's perfect room to shreds.

...

_Marisa sits seething perched on the end of the bed whilst Mpangi prowled the room in disdain, silently baring his teeth every so often on all the objects that offended him. Which was pretty much everything in this 'bedroom'._

_For all the times Marisa had griped about Asriel keeping Lyra locked in a high tower, she never imagined this was where he actually had her housed. A specifically renovated room in the Master's personal cottage perhaps, but Asriel's draughty attic room! Lyra sleeping on the same mattress she was pretty sure she and Asriel used to have sex on when they were students!_

_The wallpaper - what wallpaper?!_

_Lyra's clothes - rags! All of them, rags!_

_She had gone to Jordan College because of the comment she had said to Lyra about Roger maybe still being at Jordan College, she was so sure this was where she would find her. But now she wishes she had never set foot, because then she would have never seen this!_

_Because it wasn't fair! Lyra loved and worshipped Asriel and this was how he repaid her! She knew Asriel rarely saw her, she knew he was busy with his research, but this! This explained Lyra! Why she was so much hard work. It was all for even a shred of Asriel's attention, because there was no way he paid her any when she resided in a bedroom like this!_

_She cursed herself for defending him when Lyra told her that Asriel could be quite rude and not always a nice person to people. She cursed herself that she had corrected their child and said that perhaps it was life that had made him not a nice person, perhaps it was the things that had happened to him, and that the Asriel she once knew was kind, gentle and very considerate._

_She'd calmed down by the time Mpangi handed her the drawing._

_She could tell it was Lyra's from the doodles on her text books._

_I found it under her pillow._

_It appeared to be a city ... in the sky. A corridor of speckles - or rain - sprinkled from it, and at the bottom was a person and their daemon._

_Marisa looked closer at the drawing._

_Not rain ... Dust._

~xXx~

Later that evening, Marisa stands on the edge of her veranda wall playing dare with herself. The very same wall she had warned Lyra against on her second day with her. But the drink was the only way she got through the day now, and with the wind dancing gloriously through the crevices of her silk pyjamas and prickling her skin to life, she felt as if she were a bird flying.

Knocking back more of her drink, Marisa wonders why she didn't do this more often. She used to do this all the time when she was a child. Of course not as high up, but the edge of this veranda was not that much different to the limb of the flame tree back home.

Not that Mpangi thought so.

She grins in his direction, toasting him.

The fact that he doesn't move a muscle, doesn't let a single one of his thoughts enter her mind speaks volumes.

 _Relax Mpangi, I won't be doing anything stupid tonight. You were right, I am a person of action, and -',_ she giggles as her balance wobbles _, '- it is time I took matters into my own hands and stop relying on men who are only good for one thing; and even then they don't take proper responsibility and see it through._

She peers down at the wooden box containing her trusty spy flies her witchdoctor gave her so long ago in Benin next to the dress Lyra wore on that awful day.

She would find Lyra herself.

...

_What on Earth was that you were telling her? What I understood sounded ghastly!'_

_Marisa offered Asriel a small smile to where he stood in the threshold of Lyra's nursery. It was a simple room, in a simple cottage fit for a coalminer's family, but the fire kept it warm and simple had to do for now. Lyra, who had finally been on the cusp of sleep, grunted against her breast and started sucking again at abandon. Marisa stroked her daughter's nose, coaxing her to slow down so she didn't cause herself to choke. 'I wonder, do you actually feed her whilst I'm gone?'_

_'She feeds my love', Asriel placed a kiss on her bare shoulder. 'But she knows the nurse is not her mother'._

_Marisa smiled before blinking back tears. Was that true? After all Lyra was not even one month ... was it possible she knew the difference?_

_Of course they know that simpleton and her bird is not us, Marisa._

_Marisa didn't know... She'd gotten a breast pump to express her milk. If this world had a stronger cooling system, such as freezers, her baby wouldn't have to be fed on anything else but her breast milk, but anabaric power is much too weak. Now if they were in the North ... And Marisa's mouth twinkled thinking how on her last visit - which had only been one week ago - Asriel had declared in absolute glee of how he would take Lyra North with him - 'The North is no place for a baby, Asriel', she had chided him gently._

_'What?' Asriel asked, smiling from the arm chair next to her._

_Marisa smiled shaking her head, no._

_'What was it you were telling her?'_

_'Just a story from my childhood'._

_'What was it about?'_

_Her exhausted, muddled, hormonal brain tried to think of a lie but couldn't._

_'Because it didn't sound like a children's story to me. It sounded ... murderous'._

_'Because your understanding of the French language is so flawless'._

_'I know enough'._

_'To find the nearest brothel'._

_'Marisa', he dragged out her name. 'Please tell me the story you were telling our daughter'._

_'Why are you so intent in knowing?'_

_'Why are you so intent in me not knowing. You're always so evasive about your family and your childhood, when you know everything about mine'._

_'That's your choice, respect my choice', getting angry. Lyra'd fallen off her breast, so she starts to fix herself._

_Asriel took Lyra out of her hands and she had to resist the urge to slap him only because he had her in his arms. He plodded the room whilst trying to get her to burp._

_Marisa wanted to get angry with him, she did, because he got to spend all his time with her. She was a whole week behind him in Lyra time. But, they looked so beautiful together, and the gentle kisses he was placing on hers and Pantalaimon's forehead... She had never seen Asriel be this gentle with anything or anyone. Tall, broad and commanding in every aspect of himself and his life, she never thought it were possible for him to allow himself to be commanded over so easily, especially by something so small and at his mercy. He was a man, but she saw the small, kind and gentle little boy she once knew._

_'I do respect your choices' - he did when they didn't concern him - 'it's just, you've had my child now. I thought now you would be more trusting of me. I thought it meant that I meant something more to you'._

_And now he sounded like that little boy._

_Marisa stared up at the ceiling, stared at Mpangi and Stelmaria curled by the fire unbothered by their argument before looking back at Asriel and Lyra._

_'You really do love her don't you?' She asked him._

_He turns to look her straight in the eye. 'With everything I have'._

_Marisa nodded and sighed. 'I was telling her the tale of the witch Yambe-Akka and her mortal lover whom deceived her'._

_'Yambe-Akka', he wrongly sounded out the name. 'Like the ruins in Egypt?'_

_'It was once a great city. It is where my mother is from. Yambe-Akka is named after the witch Goddess of Death'._

_'I thought your mother was from France?'_

_Marisa shook her head, no. 'That is where she met my father'._

_Asriel nodded at this information, before smiling, 'you were sending our daughter to sleep with a tale about a Goddess of Death?' He chuckled, and pretty soon Marisa joined too._

~xXx~

Marisa heard the elevator ding from where she lounged but remained apathetic with her eyes fixed on the horizon.

She had already been informed of who it was. She wasn't in the mood for company. She was too busy hurting. Lyra was alive and well enough to betray her. There was no other way that Gyptian boy would have known where she lived. Well she hoped Lyra was happy, her meddlesome recklessness had gotten her friend killed.

_Marisa watched perplexed as her intruder started to fall backwards through the prized-open elevator doors that must have been his initial way of entry._

_Did the boy realise there was no rope attached to his body? That there was actually no physical elevator._

_The words he spoke before suddenly registered in her brain, 'I betray my family for no one'._

_'Oh, no, no!' She scrambled as quickly as she could on all fours to the elevator opening, but it was too late. She couldn't even see him._

_She stared down the elevator shaft's dark abyss bewildered waiting for sound of his landing._

_There was a heavy thud._

_She's ... gone?_

_With Mpangi's confirmation of the boy's death, Marisa screamed down at his dead body. Damned him for being able to evade her. Damned him for his heroism. His honour. Then she felt tears accumulate for him, but promptly blinked them away._

It had kept her awake most of the night, wondering how anyone could love anything that much that they would readily fall to their death for it... If she hadn't drank so much that night, maybe she would have been able to handle the situation better.

She hears Boreal's tread down the corridor. No doubt he had heard about last nights break in. No doubt the whole of London was abuzz about it.

"Your new security team are rigourous".

"Sadly they're necessary", not moving her gaze from the horizon.

He sits on the opposite end of the settee she is on.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him outstretch his hand towards hers, which she quickly moves. She hasn't forgiven him.

"Gyptians I hear. What did they want?"

She hadn't planned for him being here. She doesn't know whether to lie or tell the truth.

He must accept he's 'in the dog house' enough to not push for an answer. "And the Magisterium..."

"- All taken care of", she snaps. It wasn't, but she couldn't concentrate on that just yet. "We still have a card to play", she adds to appease him.

Thoughts of Asriel made her think of Lyra's drawing. She wouldn't have drawn it unless she had seen it. She is pretty certain Lyra had only learnt to read the alethiometer since being in her care which meant the only way she could have seen something like that was from Asriel. Had Asriel _actually_ discovered a way into another world that didn't involve using the knife...? Or did Asriel have the knife himself? Or - her thoughts stop as she recognises the cry of one of her spy flies.

Spotting it, she eagerly opens her hands to receive it.

"Are you out of your mind -", Boreal starts.

"- We've found her", speaking over him. She didn't need any of his speeches about them being illegal. She's found her and that is all that mattered.

_Good._

...

_Marisa lay face down on her bed. Nobody had disturbed her all day - her mother had mostly not disturbed her all day. Mpangi curled in a ball against her, she was left to try and block out what had happened the other night with that monster. To not think about the pain between her legs and all the blood that seemed to be rushing out of her. Apparently it was normal. Apparently it could last as long as week, by which time she would have surely died by then the rate it was flowing out of her. Apparently she was a woman now._

_Because of what Gerald Bonneville had done to her?_

_Was it he who had made her a woman?_

_She heard her bedroom door open. By the step she knew it to be her mother._

_Suddenly light rushed into her room as the drapes were wrenched open._

_Marisa and Mpangi stayed as they were, waiting for the tell tale tred of Tchaka on her bed. But it didn't come. Only when she heard the odd heavy sound of metal clanking did she look up, thinking perhaps it was Marcel and a new toy he had wanted to show her -_ _But it wasn't! It was a ... witch!_

_A black painted mask, and what looked to be yak fur fell from the crown all the way down to her ankles, where she wore what looked to be very heavy bronze manacles._

_'This is our secret, mon chaton, your father must never know'._

_Marisa nodded, dumb as the witch stepped closer to her, raising her wooden staff._

_Mpangi suddenly came into action and cawed, bearing his fangs, warning her not to come any closer._

_'This one', the witch said to her mother, pointing her staff directly at Marisa, 'she's special'._

_Marisa looked at her mother for meaning._

_Her mother stared back at her dumb. 'I always knew she was special'._

~xXx~

_Diligence_

_Over two weeks later...  
Svalbard_

So far everything had gone in their favour, after this one short stop, she would soon be in Bolvanger with only a two week delay. The Cardinal had overlooked her incident at Jordan College and the weeks she lost waiting for news on Lyra. She had played their card excellently. Not only did she have the Cardinal eating out of her hand again, but she hadn't lost control over Bolvangar to Father MacPhail. Her request for an alethiometer reading had been granted, and she still maintained her unlimited travel expenses. All this much to Father MacPhail's chagrin, which delighted even more.

Marisa frowns up at her daemon as she tries to again read through the speech she is composing for her meeting with Iofur.

Her monkey is lost staring out the zeppelin window at the vast white oblivion outside, but his thoughts are far from nothingness. _Still_ on her having asked Fra Pavel for an alethiometer reading on Lyra. He worries she's unnecessarily projected Lyra onto the Magisterium's radar.

Marisa however was more concerned about the depth of fear the Magisterium had for Asriel's 'city in the sky'. Real or not. Asriel was foolish to announce his discovery so publicly and explicitly. No wonder the Magisterium wanted his head! How long until they really did go after his weakness? Again, real or not. His daughter. _Her_ daughter. She'd felt guilt before, but now she was glad more than ever she'd had him imprisoned. Now she just had to assure the Magisterium that Lyra was also not a threat.

_'Well it's official, they want Asriel's head', Boreal bolstered into her bedroom like he owned the place._

_Marisa offered him a cool look - still not having forgiven him. Whatever he had to say to her though must be important, and that worried her. It couldn't have been two minutes ago she'd been informed that he'd asked permission to come up. 'When have they not wanted Asriel's head?' She asked boredly, delicately moving her hair out the way so that Mpangi could clasp her Magisterium pendant; her nails were still drying._

_'The CCD have just issued a suspended death sentence on Asriel for his heresy, they'll be putting their request through to parliament and to the King's council'._

_Marisa detected the ghost of a smile on Boreal's mask. 'Well the King won't accede to the Magisterium's request'._

_'It might not matter if parliament approve. Now is an excellent time to play our hand'._

_'I know', analysing her reflection - her armour. 'My meeting with the Cardinal is in an hour'. She held her head still whilst Mpangi pinned her beret. The same deep red as her heels and dress suit._

_Boreal walked closer to scrutinise her reflection too. 'Loose the blouse, you'll be more convincing'._

"Mpangi".

He turns to look at her.

_I am trying to concentrate._

_They won't like it if they find out she has an alethiometer._

_You_ _heard Fra_ _Pavel, it will take him weeks before he deciphers the reading and by that time we will have Lyra and the alethiometer._

_That's not long now, and we don't know for sure whether Lyra did voyage North._

_She's looking for Asriel, I know she is._ She thought of all Lyra's drawings of the North and Asriel's postcards Lyra had decorated the attic with. _As soon as we finish our business, we'll use the spy fly to find her._

_And what if the alethiometer informs Fra Pavel of something too compromising to keep secret from the Cardinal?_

_What exactly is it that you're worried he will have to tell the Cardinal? Lyra is not that child._

Mpangi stays silent and her hand twitches around her pen. _He'll_ _tell us the reading first. He wouldn't risk us exposing him._ Fra Pavel was one of her selected few.

_You underestimate the honour and devotion some people have to their cause. Just like you did with that Gyptian boy._

She dismissed that comment and returned to her speech, she didn't have time to be thinking about this. They would be landing soon.

_It's awfully cold outside._

_She will be fine,_ she snaps at him. _I'm sure she has a coat,_ fiddling with her pen again. _The Gyptians will look after her, just like the tribe looked after us. Considering everything, with the Gyptians is probably the best place Lyra could possibly be at the moment._

 _What if Asriel really has found a city in the sky?_ He turns to face her. _He_ _always vowed he'd find a way for the six of us to settle down together and make a new start._

_'Let's go Marisa! We have to go now!'_

Marisa frowns, _I don't recall any such declarations._

_He asked you to marry him._

_Once._ _He's spent Lyra's whole life galavanting from one place to another._

_Maybe because he thought you saw him too poor to settle down with. Maybe that's why he galavants this world, so that he can acquire back as much of his power, land and money as he can. For you._

Marisa could feel her heartbeat in her throat. _Stelmaria told you this?_

_She doesn't have to._

Marisa shook her head, no. _No Mpangi, t_ _he only reason a man makes such declarations to a woman is because he wants to bury himself inside her. Besides, Asriel might be lying about his city in the sky, it could just be another one of his ploys to get money. Just like he lied that the head he found belonged to Grunnman, and why? Because he wanted money!_

_Boreal could have being lying to us about that._

_He could have,_ she agrees. Dropping her pen to rub her temples. _Mpangi,_ _I have less than an hour before we dock and I address Iofur, and it has to go perfectly._ She picks up her speech. _This is real, Mpangi. This is now. I have test subjects waiting for me in Bolvonger. The new machine has to be perfect, which means I have to be perfect. And I can't be perfect if you are in my head, worrying about things we can't be worrying about_.

Mpangi goes to move back to the window, but she digs her fingers into his fur to make him stay. ' _We are on the cusp of grasping everything we've diligently worked for these past twenty years. All of our years without Lyra have been for what we are about to achieve. This is our last hurdle. So let me work in peace,_ she finishes, letting go of his fur.

He returns to his window and she returns to her speech.

 _Let me help,_ after some time.

"I'm perfectly fine".

He goes to open his mouth - to apologise to her she thinks _out loud_ \- and tears shoot in her eyes. She holds up her hand. _Not right now, Mpangi. Not after twenty years._

...

_She ran up the concrete stairs of the Belacqua Manor's great house and the heavy entrance doors opened readily for her._

_She weaved her way through the grandeur, not caring the state the servants saw her in._

_She found the dining room empty._

_Marching back through the doors, she wondered whether to make her way to the grand dining room - although it was unlikely he'd be there when he had no company - or his favourite drawing room on the second floor._

_'He's gone abed, Miss'._

_She heard someone tut him behind her._

_It was the hall boy. The one Michael and Asriel always teased had a soft spot for her._

_She starts for his bedroom._ _'Thank-you', sending a hard glare to the two parlour maids as she passed._

_She found Lord Belacqua in bed._

_'Ah, my dear', coughing as he sat up._

_'Are you alright?' Going to his side. Mpangi climbed out her arms and went to the docile pine marten's side._

_'Tis just a small cold, nothing to worry yourself about. So what said your family when you told them of St Sophia's?'_

_Marisa burst out crying, eventually managing to tell him that her stepfather had refused she be allowed to attend._

_'All is not lost my dear, it is quite a simple solution. You must marry. You are of age, and that way he can no longer proceed to hold you back from the extraordinary woman you already are and are to become'._

_Marriage?! She cried more._

_'Come now, what if it was someone you loved. Michael?'_

_Marisa pulled up short._

_'I'm only teasing my dear_ _', he coughed more. 'Asriel. I know you both love each other. You always have. You're both just too proud and blockheaded to admit'._

_Marisa turned away her heating cheeks, shaking her head, no._

_'No? In that case I'll sponsor your costs. We'll have a big party and I'll announce it publicly like I did last time, and like last time your stepfather will have to say yes'._

_Marisa shakes her head, no, again. She couldn't. Lord Belacqua had already done too much for her._

_'Don't be proud, Marisa. You know it would be a mere drop in an ocean to me', he patted her hand. 'I'll set it up now. Thorlod!' He rang the bell next to his bedside, before starting another fit of coughs._

_Thorold entered the room but Marisa asked him to fetch some chamomile tea for Lord Belacqua instead. She then picked up the book on his bedside, nestled beside him, and started reading it aloud._

_'Thorold', closing the bedroom door behind her, it hadn't taken long for Lord Belacqua to fall asleep. 'Has a doctor been called?' She had checked Lord Belacqua's forehead and it felt warm._

_'Not yet'._

_'I think it best you call one, then write letters to his sons informing them of what the doctor says, no matter how small it is, they'd want to know regardless'._

_'Right you are, Miss - Miss', he stopped her. 'Shall I have a maid prepare your room?'_

_She shook her head, no. 'I'm not staying'. She had to return to her family, it wasn't proper the way she had ran out on them during dinner._

~xXx~

_Bolvanger Research Facility_   
_Five days later..._

Everything had been going to plan. Well almost to plan. That idiot of an Ice Bear had fallen for Asriel's charms and provided him a research station. But the Magisterium didn't know that, and Iofur maintained Asriel was still under guard.

Everything was _almost_ going to plan as her bumbling lead scientists informed her of their progress. Which although was nowhere near finishing, was progress she could report to the Cardinal at once, and now she was here she could monitor it properly and put various hypotheses to test. Not that she wanted the project to be completed before Pantalaimon settled. Once Lyra hit puberty, that was when the real work began.

Seeing your child about to be mutilated by the very machine yourself and her father brainstormed together - for entirely different purposes - had definitely not been the plan.

Having to graciously endure Lyra's _still_ audacious manner, and explain herself and her decisions to her like she were the Cardinal himself had been taxing. Especially because she knew Asriel would never get this treatment from Lyra, even though he had lied to her more times than she had, even though it was his decisions that had separated them in the first place, and even though he intended his machine for much graver uses. But Marisa was 'mother' and from the womb onwards, 'mother' is supposed to be her child's evergreen source of nourishment and nurture, to provide all and put her child before all else, and a whole list of other things Marisa hadn't provided Lyra that would reach High Brazil and back. 'Father' only needed to water mother's seed, everything else he _felt_ to provide his child was to be lauded.

Swallowing her pride and accepting all this for her child, Lyra still ran from her - most likely in the direction of her father.

Marisa ran after her, and this time she did so immediately, and by her own means.

Following the chaos to the courtyard, she scans the faces of her perpetrators and commits their faces to memory, perhaps when she returns to London she can get retribu- Ma Costa.

She quickly averts her gaze.

Of course ...

‘ _Billy Costa is dead!’ Lyra cried at her._

The next she recognises is Lyra's kitchen boy, and she breathes a little easier knowing he's alive and cognitive. Atleast she could tell Lyra her machine hadn't taken her best friend from her.

Then she sees the 'progess'. The shaven heads and sunken beings.

_Her friends had already vacated the area not being able to watch anymore, but she stayed. She didn't see the use of running, they would still be able to hear the boy's and his daemon's screams for miles. The boy locked in his wooden cage, his baboon in another as the witchdoctor danced whilst she performed the Zombi ceremony. Even though she understood it was necessary to the clockwork of Benin, it felt tedious and overwraught to Marisa. She felt surely there was a quicker way to create the separation._

_Once that part of the ceremony was complete and the cries silenced, the witchdoctor wrapped a blanket around the now zombified boy and shaves his head. She then breaks the fruit and gives each half to the boy and his daemon to symbolise they are no longer one._

The snow falling around Marisa's vision becomes more delicate, as if the universe wanted her to have a clear view of the 'fruit' of her hardwork. She has none of her furs on, but oddly, she starts to feel over heated, because in this moment she sees it, like she knew she would continue to see in the darkest moments in her future - what had she actually achieved over all these years that hadn't already been achieved in Africa with Zombis - other than what she argued was a more humane methodology? She could argue to herself that progress was intentionally slow because of Lyra, but what if she didn't achieve more than zombified pre-pubescents? If all her work was just the re-writing of something that had already been discovered and practiced for centuries.

Her thoughts stop as she spots Lyra approaching the middle of the revolt, looking very much like a beacon of hope.

Marisa starts to retreat back into her shadows.

_Marisa ... Lyra, she's right there._

Marisa shook her head, no, turning around, letting the door close with a heavy thud.

Mpangi cawed at her but she ignored him, walking faster.

The snow felt heavier now and she was beginning to feel the cold.

Blinking away the tears that had started to collect, she starts sniggering at the hilarity of it all. This is what years of careful and persistent work effort had gotten her. Hiding behind her crumbling state-of-the-art research facility whilst watching her test subjects be liberated by a group of uneducated low-life vagabonds.

No more hilarious than what motherhood had given her, a child whom since conception seemed to be constantly working against her, like it was her sole purpose for existing.

 _Why are you letting her leave again?!_ Mpangi running to keep up with her.

 _I couldn't very well walk up and take her,_ she snaps at him. _She wouldn't have gone with me, and they wouldn't have let me take her. You saw their faces when they saw them._ Shuddering, if she had wandered into the Intercision Room even a second later, that would have been Lyra.

She can't even comprehend or begin to imagine what she would have done if she had gotten there too late.

_Go and get your child, Marisa, whilst you still can!_

_I'll follow her soon, Mpangi._ She growled back at her daemon. _I know where she is going. But I'm not equipped at the moment to take her or to go after her. We have to replan and restrategise what we're going to do. But for now at least we know she's safe._

_Replan. Restrategise. How long will that take? Another twelve years?! Lyra won't need a mother then!_

Marisa stops her stride.

Turning on her monkey, she picks him up by the scruff of his neck and screams at him.

He screeches back just as loud.

She throws him to the ground, her own body immediately following. Her hands crunch the snow between fists.

After a few deep breaths she looks up to see Mpangi shaking out a hind leg.

It makes her think of Gerrard Bonneville's hyena.

His eyes connect with hers and picking herself up, she cradles him in her arms, smothering his forehead with kisses. "I'm sorry", she says to him out loud.

...

_'So, what are you going to do?' Boreal asked._

_'Do?' She frowned at him. 'What can I do? Edward's dead, Asriel's been arrested, and Lyra...', she closed her eyes. This is what complacency, cowardliness and carelessness has gotten for her. This is what it had gotten for her daughter. 'Why, do you think you can get her back to me?'_

_'I don't know...'_

_'Please Boreal, I'll do anything. I'll cross over for sure this time and never come back if you can only get my daughter back to me'._

_'Marisa, do you realise what they're going to do to you in that court room? They're going to make examples of the both of you'._

_'All I want is my baby Boreal, please'._

_'They don't let married women keep their bastards, widowed or not'._

_She let out a guttural howl and hugged Mpangi closer to her. She knew that, but it still hurt hearing it._

_Why had she allowed herself to act so recklessly? When her birth plan didn’t go to plan, why had she allowed herself to become wooed and complacent for so long afterwards when she knew what had to be done?_

_Love._

_Love for Asriel. For Asriel and Lyra together. For the three of them and their daemons together. Too coward to end the make-believe._

_'I'm not saying that to be cruel, I'm just trying to help you by being honest. The best thing you can do is to make sure you come out of that court room in the best possible position you can. Making declarations of love in the court room will have you leaving that court room destitute, and that will be no help to your child do you understand?'_

_She nodded._

_'With careful planning, strategy, effort and patience, you may eventually be able to get your daughter back but only if you listen and do everything I say'._

_She nodded again._

_'I'll vouch for you as best as I can Marisa, but your time for play is over now, you need to grow up and take responsibility'._

_She nodded. If it meant she would eventually get Lyra back, she would do it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided not to tread on the infamous 'mother' scene, because I've read so many amazing other works surrounding it, I don't even know how I would begin to write my own interpretation... that being said, maybe I will revisit it in a flash back. 
> 
> I'm glad to be writing more Asriel and Marisa moments, I think there will be more the closer they get to each other. But definitely missed the Lyra and Marisa moments. Boreal is appearing less like the perfect friend - which I'm glad - and Marisa is starting to stand up to him. 
> 
> I don't know how you felt but as a child I always felt a bit disgruntled that Lyra's daemon settled as something as common as a pine marten whilst her parents had such exciting daemons, it feels better in my head that she would have the same daemon as a grandparent.
> 
> And Marisa's silent collapse as she experienced what I think every researcher experiences somewhere in the course of their research - what am I actually achieving that hasn't been done already?
> 
> Next chapter, anger and hopefully venturing into season 2 - which I have now watched. I timed it so that on the day the last episode aired I watched all of S2 back to back :) Until next update!


	5. Wrath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst becoming a new mother to twelve year old Lyra, Marisa considers her relationship with the eight deadly sins. How they have affected her life, and how they continue to affect her daughter.

**Marisa's Eight Deadly Sins**

Chapter Five: Wrath

_'Wrath', anger, rage and hatred. Manifesting impatience, revenge and self destructive behaviour, whilst provoking injury, violence and feuds_.

Many theorised 'pride' was the deadliest of sins, 'the root of all evil'. Marisa disagreed, especially as she took in the decimation of her new machine in the aftermath of the Gyptian attack on Bolvanger. Anger and revenge have been the deadliest roots in her life thus far.

'Wrath' thrums in waves, the laboratory's sterile, concrete walls fight to contain it, just as her body does. She is so angry she may combust, the walls exploding with her.

 _It might not have been Lyra,_ Mpangi tentative from his perch on the shattered windowsill in the control room's viewing platform.

_'If it was so good, you should have let them do it. You should have been glad!'_

_She admired her daughter's cool yet incriminating tone despite it being directed at her. Most children Lyra's age - and indeed adults - in this situation would be simpering, useless puddles, their voices an octave above understanding; she knew as she had witnessed it many times. But not her daughter. She looked Marisa straight in the eye_ \- _conveying such loathing - her delivery straight, enunciating each word crisp and to the point._ _There was so much power behind her demeanour, that gave so much power to her words. And for a short moment, Marisa was proud. Her daughter was strong. Much stronger than she had been at her age and that had to count for something. '... That machine is not quite ready for you', she smiled,_ _willing her girl to find comfort and understanding in the embrace of her offered bed and chamomile._

Her hands start to clench into fists and she coerces them to be still, for her body to be still, for her heart to be still. No matter what she may be feeling right now, she had to stay focussed and rational. She _couldn't_ risk the anger overwhelming her like it had done in Jordan. Her daughter had already done that. And her's, Lyra's and Asriel's positions at the moment were already too precarious. She _needed_ to keep her head, replan and re-stratigise for the sake of all three of them.

She breathes in deeply.

She'd heard the angry buzz of her lost spy fly too late. Lyra had taken her offered comfort and spat it back in her face - again. It's small sting felt like the deadliest venom, throwing her to the floor as if it were Lyra's teeth that had bitten her neck before knocking her down.

_'Now is the time to decide who you belong to, once and for all'._

Lyra had made her decision, but Marisa still ran after her, because she believes she can make Lyra understand.

 _Lyra! Picking herself up and trying_ _to yank the only door out her quarters open._

She'd heard the metallic pounding against the panel outside breaking the lock mechanism. A metaphor of Lyra wanting her locked out of her life? Whatever object it was she used, it felt like it were Lyra's own fists pummelling sense against Marisa's skull that Lyra would never be hers. But then Lyra'd screamed and Marisa felt it was the girl trying to fight whatever love she felt for her, and in her own frustration, she'd screamed back because if Lyra would only properly listen, she would see she was right and know that everything she had done was for her.

She breathes out and turns to walk away from the destruction.

Billy Costa.

Roger.

The years of neglect and lies.

Denying her a mother.

Setting her daemon on her.

This was Lyra's revenge. This is how the girl best knew to cause her mother injury.

Marisa stops before she leaves the threshold and screams to let it all out. Bolvanger. Asriel. Lyra. Boreal.

It almost causes her to keel over, having to catch her breath and her body against the wall. But she feels lighter. The anger slightly subdued for now.

_It was her Mpangi, but it's alright._

...

_Marisa eyed her daughter tucked up in bed peeping back at her with eyes playing the picture of innocence, and wondered whether she had the patience to be her mother._

_She shook her head still remembering Lyra's earth shattering scream from earlier and how it'd chilled her bones._

_She'd scrambled out her office envisioning Lyra having fallen off the veranda wall, or Judge Goody's fat finger's dragging her daughter into the lift._

_Her heart had stopped when she saw Lyra face down on the marble floor, Pantalaimon lying still next to her._

_She'd skidded over, barking orders to the servant to call a doctor, before_ _turning Lyra carefully. Cradling her immediately when she saw all the blood, frantically_ _looking for an opening, and not finding one, fearing it was internal. She opened Lyra's mouth and it was only after some prying did she realise that the shaking of her daughter's body was not from injury but because she was laughing._

_'It's just crushed berries, Mrs Coulter. See', she'd giggled, swiping the 'blood' from her forehead and sucking it off her finger._

_She looked at Pantalaimon who had suddenly yapped to life, proudly sticking out his overly long pink tongue, his little white tail wagging wildly._

_Dropping Lyra out of her embrace she caught Mpangi just in time._

_He'd screeched the girl down, but_ _Lyra'd been too lost in her giggles._

 _When she'd moved to get up however, it'd spooked Lyra and she let out a delighted scream, scrambling off the floor as if she thought it were a game and Marisa would chase her. She'd timed it badly though and knocked into the table in front, Marisa's very expensive antique Japanese vase from Boreal's world cracked on Lyra's head before smashing on the floor._ _'Oops', was all she'd giggled._

_In her anger, she'd banished Lyra to her room with the promise of no dinner and left any injuries in the hands of the already called doctor._

_She crumbled however an hour ago and found Lyra still dressed in her stained clothes but reading her mathematics book whilst busily writing out equations in her textbook. She'd bathed Lyra helping her into pyjamas before heating up a tin of soup and buttering a slice of bread for her. All the while, Lyra's steady dark eyes watched her from under her long black eyelashes._

_'Goodnight Lyra'._

_'Goodnight Mrs Coulter', she smiled instantly, moving to kiss her cheek. 'Mrs Coulter?' Entirely too chirpy._

_She knew the girl had been waiting patiently to be invited back into conversation. 'It's bedtime Lyra', getting up and walking to the door before she got locked into another one of her stories._

_'What's the name of your daemon?' Sitting up in bed._

_Mpangi had already left the room._

_'He's such a lovely daemon, I hope Pan settles as something as interesting, but he probably won't because I haven't been outside boring old Brytain. Or perhaps a snow leopard like my Uncle Asriel. Or an argali like my father - Mrs Coulter?' Sounding hurt._

_She had almost got the door closed._ _'Maybe he'll tell you one day, Lyra. When he learns to trust you', she gave her a pointed look before closing the door._

~xXx~

Marisa smiles and gestures her head scientists sit in the two chairs in front of her. If there was one thing she is good at doing, it's smiling through her anger. She'll live longer and smile lines are more attractive in old age than frown lines.

They still look nervous and they're right too.

Reminding herself _again_ that despite this heavy set back, she and her project _will_ rise again and having to find replacements this far in would not be rational, she sits. Mpangi perches on her shoulder, his tail trapped between her's and her chair's back. "Billy Costa".

" _-Who?_ " Dr Rendal's yelps _too quickly._

"Aged 11, and young for his age at that. Far from change. I've counted fourteen subjects who were older than him. Why was he used?"

Dr Rendal's panicked face turns to look at Dr Cooper who stares blankly at the table. "He was disobedient. Kept trying to run away. We thought making him more docile would be a good thing. We didn't expect him to have the wits to escape", his eyes like his voice wobbles as he speaks.

"So he escaped?" This was news to her. Which meant Lyra and the Gyptians must have found him. Mpangi growls on her shoulder and she pushes further back in her chair. Dr Rendal cowers and Dr Cooper shakes her head, as if cursing being paired with him. "A compound with trained staff and guarded by armed Samoyeds?"

"He wouldn't have gotten far"

"Well that's the point, he's dead", she snaps angrily before bringing her face back to smile. "Found by the very same Gyptians who have destroyed my very expensive laboratory".

"We ordered guards to look for him immediately, Mrs Coulter. They found that girl instead ... Lizzie. The one who said she knew you ... who called you 'mother'".

Out the corner of her eye, she sees Dr Cooper roll her eyes. The thing Dr Rendal really didn't understand but it seemed Dr Cooper had an inkling to was her current anger didn't so much stem from her staffs' incompetence to guard a group of children, but how the unnecessary death of Billy Costa had injured hers and Lyra's relationship, and most of all, _how they almost mutilated her daughter!_

"Ah yes, Lizzie Brooks", she smiles. "I'm so glad you brought her up. Did you or did you not get my correspondence stating I wanted an armed search be put out for a young girl who would be travelling with a group of adults and that whilst the others were expendable she was not to be harmed?"

"I wasn't the one who registered her", Dr Rendal says in relief, looking at Dr Cooper.

"You said the name, Lyra Belacqua", Dr Cooper, much more composed than her counterpart, looking her straight in the eye.

"And you didn't think a child could lie?"

"I was looking for a twelve year old. The child in question looked to be much older, on the verge of change, which was why we used her. I did inform you of her Mrs Coulter on your arrival".

And she had immediately looked for Lyra in both the girl's and intercised dormitories and not found her. "That you did", she stands. "Well you best make your way to the airship".

They both stood.

"Not you Dr Rendal", she smiles.

It wasn't necessary to have _two_ head scientists, and his decision to send a distress call to the Magisterium whilst they had been under attack had lost her access to the airship she needed to find Lyra as the pilots are now under strict orders to stay stationary until backup arrived.

The only good news was that apparently reinforcements were already en-route - which worried her as to why - and should arrive by morning. The bad news was that until then, she was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and save wrangling some dogs and a sleigh, she had no guarantee that she would be able to acquire transportation to find Lyra.

...

_The birthing was over, both she and the baby had been checked and cleaned. Now they were alone cuddled together skin-to-skin underneath blankets in one of the cottage's bedroom. Asriel had lit the fire before he left, not that it was needed, it was a glorious day outside and although it was late evening the sun was still up and would be for a couple more hours._

_Her fingers lightly traced her sleeping daughter's features, her kisses following immediately after. She had her brow and eyes - she had recognised the structure immediately - and then when she opened her eyes to Asriel as she fed, they saw they were the same colour as hers. She had parts of both hers and Asriel's nose, and Asriel's lips, and whispers of white blonde hair. The baby snow leopard a perfect miniature of Stelmaria._

_Her daughter sighed deeply in her sleep and she chuckled as she watched her yawn._

_She will be due feeding again soon, Mpangi reminded from where he was piled against her hair._

_The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it Mpangi?_

_One of his black fingers trailed down to gently stroke the baby's cheek before stroking the baby snow leopard. Let's not think of her today, Marisa._

_'Born just in time for tea, weren't you my little star?'_

_'It's interesting you should call her that', Asriel's voice came from the threshold and she jumped a little not realising he'd returned and been watching them._

_Stelmaria wandered straight into the room and putting her front paws on the bed nuzzled the baby gently._

_Asriel waited where he was, perhaps wondering whether he was welcomed - not that it stopped him before. She had been angry at him, very. And rightfully so, it was only this morning he’d cooly dismissed her from his bedroom like she were a common whore, before completely sabotaging her birthing plans. But now the baby was here and safe, she found she felt too much love to be angry. 'I brought you some of my clothes, I thought maybe you preferred?'_

_She had refused the clothes the nurse had given her to wear. She didn't think it was because they were her clothes, more than her wanting to be left alone with her baby. 'Thank-you', she said quietly and it was enough for him to enter._

_He dumped the clothes on the end of the bed and laid down next to her, placing a kiss on her bare shoulder before he did so on their daughter's forehead and the miniature Stel._

_She felt his gaze on hers and she turned to look at him._

_He kissed her hard on the lips, harder again and this time she returned his kiss. 'She's perfect', he said._

_She smiled. That, they agreed on._

_'Are you disappointed she's mine?'_

_'No, Asriel', kissing him this time. 'I'm happy', she smiled being honest with him for once. 'I'm very happy'._

_'Have you thought of names, my love?'_

_'My love' was something he had started calling her the moment after the baby's birth._

_'Not really', she said. Which was a lie. If the baby were Asriel's and a girl, she'd planned to call her Stella, but that was for their life in the other world. Now she didn't know. She guessed nothing had changed except she had seen Asriel with her now, and she knew he wouldn't let her go easily. That he would destroy this world looking for her if he thought her alive._

_'I thought Lyra. It's a star like you and Stelmaria. Near your name-star Polaris and the zodiacs of her birth month. It's a North star and I love the North. And Lyra is the lyre-'_

_'- of Orpheus'. The name of her father's daemon._ _Asriel knew many stories about her father, as he would listen as Lord Belacqua recounted them to her._ _'You've thought about this a lot'._

_'I've had months to think on it'._

_'I like it'._

_He kissed her shoulder again, 'Lyra Belacqua', smiling down at the baby._

~xXx~

In the evening Marisa wanders the carcass of her laboratory, reminiscing on all her hard work that had led to its construction. Her trip to scout this area had been her first time North. She remembers how Mpangi buried himself in her layers they had felt so cold. But then she took in that first breath of North air and understood what drew Asriel here, feeling like a child and the world once again her oyster.

She spots her crouched in the snow. She hears her whimpering.

_'Who's the girl?' Marisa asked Asriel over the girl she'd seen outside hanging out Lyra's baby clothes. She took Lyra out of his arms to hold her baby close to her, immediately feeling the jigsaws of her heart starting to piece back together._

_'She was the scullery maid in the kitchen, but I thought she would be better used here'._

_Marisa went to snap -_

_"- I thought you would prefer it her instead of Ma Costa whilst you visited, considering how hostile the woman makes you'._

_'Ma Costa' was it? No longer just 'nurse'. She turned her back on him. She felt 'hostile' was a bit unfair. She didn't like the woman but it wasn't personal. She could be with Lyra whilst she was stuck in London with Edward._

_'Ma Costa is not your enemy Marisa, and neither is this new girl. There is no need for imagined_ _rivalries. They are both unequal to you in all ways'._

"You didn't leave?" Approaching Clara. Maybe it was her she'd unconsciously returned for when she'd seen she wasn't accounted for. "Why aren't you at the airfield with the others?"

Clara flinches when she sees her. She'd always been shy of her. "This is the best place you could possibly be". She repeats the mantra they drone to their intercised subjects.

_She has regressed?_

She had noticed that Mpangi hadn't come near the girl. "We cut out your daemon, not your brain", crouching to her height.

"You seem ... upset".

 _Upset?_ Marisa almost laughed at the feeble terminology to describe the violent uncontrollable anger that currently coursed through her veins. She hadn't felt anything as delicate as 'upset' since she was a child. "The girl's gas balloon, did you see which way it went?"

"There were a lot of girls in this facility-"

"-Lyra", she says impatiently. Maybe the familiar name would trigger sense into her.

She could see the young woman's brain try to process the name.

Marisa of course hadn't talked to her about Lyra since 'recruiting' her, but she was sure all her staff were abuzz about what almost happened. "Did you see which way Lyra went?"

"I don't know a Lyra, Mrs Coulter".

Marisa eyes her. It is possible intercision had affected those memories but it is equally possible she is lying. "Then you are of no use to me", she warns.

"I'd like to be of use ... I would like to make you happy".

_'Did you make this?' She asked the girl sat quietly on the floor by the fire in the nursery like she usually did in the evenings doing something or other. She indicated to the make-shift sling she had Lyra in whilst she fed._

_The girl turned smiling from where she and her daemon were practicing different forms. 'I did M'am'._

_'It's very useful', Marisa smiled at her._

_The girl blushed. 'Thank-you M'am. I'm glad you're happy with it'._

"Happy?"

"Yes"

"Here?"

_She's lying Marisa._

Marisa clutches the young woman by her throat and throws her on the ground strangling her. Not because she thinks Mpangi is right and she is angry at Clara for lying, but because she's angry that life has brought them both here when they used to be so happy sat up together in that overly hot little cottage with the fire burning unnecessarily because Asriel was worried that without it Lyra would be cold. Someone betrayed them, and when she had her chance, she would strangle the life out of them just as she was doing to Clara now.

A little white dog flashes across her mind and she knows that Mpangi has thought of Clara's daemon ... Nicholas. Marisa gasps, instantly releasing her hands from Clara's throat and lifts the girl's head to try comfort her, conscious that she may have already killed her.

"I didn't know where else to go", Clara finally whimpers. "I don't know where to go"

Marisa stands, gasping again as another memory starts to take hold of her ... Nicholas in a butterfly form entertaining baby Lyra, she always used to be so enraptured by the different forms he'd perform for her.

"Can I tell you a secret, Clara?" Not waiting for an answer. "You asked me if I was upset earlier. The truth is, I'm always upset, not just upset, angry. Not once in my twelve years without Lyra have I not been angry at everything, everyone, but mostly myself. I just control it exceptionally well", she smiles, and then spares a thought for Clara's neck and Dr Rendal's snapped neck. "Sometimes".

...

_Marisa searched the airship wreckage for her._

_Had Asriel seriously thought this would end any other way?_ _Complete self-destructiveness and this is where it had gotten everyone._ _It was madness setting off in weather like this! But Asriel had still been wild with rage and impermeable on his decision._

_She found her face down and said a silent prayer as she couldn't see Nicholas._

_Edward was dead. Both Asriel, Thorold and their daemons were unconscious._ _She needed the girl to be alive._

_She'd managed to heave scattered daemons to their humans, bind what she could - her dress was complete tatters - but there was too much blood and their wounds looked serious. It was only her, Lyra - now thankfully having stopped crying and eating peacefully at her breast with Pantalaimon safely in her baby sling - and their daemons who had miraculously been unharmed._

_'Clara?' Slowly turning the girl over. There was blood everywhere but she was breathing._

_Mpangi jumped off her shoulder and started to look for Nicholas. The problem with Clara's daemon not being settled, they didn't know what size he might be._

_'I'm sorry I fetched Lord Belacqua', Clara whimpered. 'I didn't know what was happening and I thought it the right thing to do, but that man's dead because of me and now...'_

_Marisa tried to soothe her._

_What was she to do? She had screamed for help but no one had answered so far._

_The Gyptians would be long gone by now as it had been hours since Asriel had ordered them to leave._

_She thought she knew where they were, and if she were right, it would mean the closest help would be from the Belacqua great house, she could be there in half an hour. But how could she do that without declaring herself here and her dead child alive? The weather was too volatile to hide Lyra anywhere._ _Walking back to the city to alert help would_ _take some hours now that it was dark and storming_

 _Did Asriel have that long?_ _Not to mention it was dangerous for Lyra. She and her baby might be found dead in a ditch by morning, their ragged clothes caked in mud and glued to their skin. Later lain next to each other on the cold, undertaker's slab 'pneumonia' listed as cause of death like one of those depressing Hardy tales..._

_She and Lyra were more than that._

~xXx~

It was after lunch when backup arrived and Marisa stands in the middle of the near-empty airship carrier waiting for Father MacPhail to acknowledge her. Thinking like always when she needed be in his presence, how there was no one she detested more than him. "Father MacPhail", she announces herself because as their feud went, he had the upper hand. "Our paths do keep crossing".

He turns and on seeing her pauses his address to the Magisterium troops but he doesn't quite walk over to her.

Yes, they have clear battle zones.

"You're to travel home", he starts ordering her like she's one of his troops. "The Cardinal wishes to speak to you. You failed!"

Marisa's lips quirk, pretty certain that saying those words to her was the only reason he ventured into this conversation.

"Your project lies in ruins all your experiments have yielded nothing. I'm here for Asriel".

Before his last sentence, he hadn't said anything she hadn't already told herself... "... Asriel?" All of a sudden finding it difficult to breathe ... because where Asriel was, there was possibly Lyra too... and there had to be at least _ten_ _armed_ airships, which she had thought excessive even for a small Gyptian militia... Her feet walk closer to Father MacPhail on their own accord. "Asriel is with Iofur. I made sure that he-"

"- yes", raising his hand for her to stop, and because she is currently at his mercy, she does. "I remember your reassurances, but Iofur gave him freedom to experiment as he wished in his own custom built laboratory".

Ah.

How had the Magisterium found that out?

"It's seems you had less control than you thought-"

_I would like to show him how much control you have._

"- And now Iofur is dead".

_... What? Fuck!_

_He's lying._

_Why would he lie?_ "What?" It had only been last week she had addressed him. Iofur? Dead? "When?"

Father MacPhail didn't seem to be able to answer that.

_So what? The bear is out of play Marisa -_

_\- A perfectly fucking good hand ruined!_ One that had almost been a year in the making!

"His guards are now his protectors", Father MacPhail continued and Marisa caught how scared he sounded, "the Magisterium want him stopped once and for all".

Once and for all... _It sounds like a death sentence._

 _You'll have to go with them,_ _you're the only one who will care whether they live or die._

_I know that! But how do I convince this imbecile to not have me thrown on an airship back to London like the Cardinal has ordered? Play the old blackmail card again? I daresay it's starting to loose it's membership with him._

_If you would only listen to what I'm trying to tell you._

_Well?!_

_If Father MacPhail truly needs to deliver Asriel without him giving them the slip, there is still only one person in this world that can get close enough to him._

_Me._ Mpangi was right, it was her cunt that lost the Belacqua power, land and money.

 _And the Magisterium know that better than anyone._ _Even Father MacPhail wouldn't risk not playing that card._

 _Yes._ _But Mpangi, if Lyra's injured as a consequence of this attack, I will kill Asriel myself. He's treated us all badly and it's his actions that've brought us all here'._

_..._

_'So that's the man Asriel rescued and nursed back to health', Boreal, handing her a glass of champagne._

_She didn't turn to look. She had met Stanislaus Grumman after his talk on polar magnetics at the Arctic Institute. He had very publicly ignored her and her question._

_'I've been tasked to find out more information on him'._

_'Oh?' Moving away from the group they were in conversation with so they could talk more privately. 'Heresy?'_

_'His references don't add up'._

_She grinned wickedly. ‘How embarrassing', taking a sip of champagne. She hoped they were falsified and his name got dragged through the mud. It would be the perfect revenge for his treatment of her. 'I guess that's why you chose to wear the pink bowtie this evening?' Innocently. Watching him from underneath her heavy mascara as she took another sip._

_A smile cracked on his stoney face. She was pretty sure she was the only one in this world who could do that. He glanced over at her and held her gaze._

_'What's the magic word?'_

_He rolled his eyes, trying to suppress another smile. 'Please'._

_'I'll try my best if he wanders my way_ _, but we have already met, and he did not find me favourable'._

_'I find that hard to believe', he started to walk away before returning to her side, 'but don't go getting to know him too well', he whispered._

_'I will expect satisfactory payment later this evening', she smirked._

_Boreal left to join Grumman's conversation._

_How things have changed, Mpangi. Smug. Gone were the days when Boreal would whisper a name in her ear and she did as he bid._

_'I've been admiring your necklace', a voice sounded to the side of her and she looked up._

_She politely excused herself from the conversation she was now in. She hadn't yet tried to attract Grumman's attention - this was the King's annual ball after all and she refused he humiliate her again - but here was the man himself striking up conversation with her._ _She walked with him until they found a space on their own. 'And here I thought I had nothing to be admired'._

 _'Well perhaps if you had as much flesh on show, I would have been persuaded_ _'._

_Her red floor length dress - the same shade as her lipstick - that clung to her figure was supposed to draw attention, as was the necklace that dipped low between the bosoms of her décolletage, just as Boreal had taught her._

_She smiled taking a passing truffle and popping it into her mouth whole, thinking how she might enjoy getting to know this man better. He had to be athletic to be able to keep up with Asriel in the wilds of the North, and he had a quick tongue which was a find in this world._

_His eyes followed her mouth._

_She was wrong earlier. This was going to be easy._ _'And are you persuaded now?'_

_He swallowed and averted his gaze._

_'I recommend the ganache chocolatl. It's very moorish and the taste lingers on your tongue for a while. Care for a taste?'_

_He cleared his throat and took a small step closer to her. 'Even if I wanted a ride on the town bicycle, you're off limits'._

_She understood the insult. Mpangi leaped from the floor onto her shoulder, and she placed a hand on his to settle him._

_Grumman's daemon's wings fluttered nervously._

_'Mr Coulter has left me widowed'._

_'Mrs Coulter is it? And here I thought you were Lady Belacqua?'_

_She smiled understanding his twice slight. Loyalty to his saviour. 'You are mistaken', moving to walk away._

_'- She looks like you, your daughter. I glimpse her galavanting around the spires of Jordan College at all hours of the day, like it her private thoroughbred. I have a child myself who I am unable to see'._

_'I wonder why?' She deadpanned. 'Did you happen to call the mother a bicycle too?'_

_'No, she is nothing like you. She would never abandon her child like you have yours'._

_'Hmm, like you have yours? Like Asriel has his? But being men, I suppose that legitimises it?'_

_He looks at his pocket watch to hide the wave of anger that so visibly crossed his face and she smirked._

_When he_ _looked up at her, he smiled like he hadn't spent the last few minutes insulting her. 'I'm still getting used to this wind-up mechanism. Very old fashioned', putting it away._

_'Hmm'_

_He slicked back his hair. Another tick. She was really getting under his skin and it was making her rather flustered._

_'You know, I've read your paper on how time is affected by the amount of planets in a solar system. I wanted to thank-you. It really has been a God send', he leaned in closer to her again, his body shaking slightly. 'You're quite brilliant, aren't you? But even brilliant people trip up'._

_'Yes I know, I've heard rumours over the legitimacy of your supposed credentials. Is this a confession?' She blinked at him innocently._

_He sneered. 'Your necklace-'._

_'- is it really my necklace you're interested in? Partiality to liquor as well as fraud?'_

_'A liquor bottle? I say it looks more like a perfume bottle. Chanel No.5, if I'm not mistaken. Tell me, do you wear it to bed?'_

_Mpangi growled._

_So, he was from Boreal's world, and this was what? A threat?_

_He stepped closer and lifted the pendant off her skin. 'Coco No.5. Chanel. Paris'._

_Disengage, Marisa._

_'I'm bored of your tongues and I've had my fill of your petty insul-'_ _\- she started to walk away but he grabbed her wrist, pulling her against him._

 _'_ _William', he breathed heavily down her neck, 'He was three last I saw him._ _It's now almost been a year since I became lost in the Arctic, which makes him almost eight and that's not accounting for my time in the other world._ _I need to-_ _'_

_She'd felt Stelmaria's fur at her fingertips long before Asriel arrived._

_'- Let go of her', he growled._

_Grumman let go instantly._

_She saw the tears in his eyes._ _'Let's not make a bigger scene than we already have', she growled at Asriel. 'He's just had a bit too much drink', she laughed loudly as there were definitely onlookers, the loud rumbustious laughter now a hum. 'Take your friend home, Asriel. I never want to hear his insults of me again'._

_'What happened?' Boreal asked after the noise had picked up again._

_'You were right to be suspicious. He is from the other world'._

~xXx~

Their timing to Asriel's laboratory was perfect. Asriel and Lyra had already left, and Thorold - bless his heart - knocked Father MacPhail out cold for her so she hadn't had to use the revolver she had hidden between her thighs. Using the location from Asriel's telescope as her guide, Marisa made her way up the mountain top alone. Leaving the Magisterium troops outside Asriel's laboratory with instructions they stayed put until ordered.

She saw the blinding flash of light and the aurora dancing in the sky. _The energy release from Asriel's intercision machine!_ Thorold had said that Asriel left with just the boy, but that he hadn't been able to stop _Lyra_ from following when she realised that Asriel was going to cut the boy.

_'Cut? Those were her words?'_

_'Aye, those were her words'._

How did Lyra know this? The alethiometer? She pulled out her revolver, wedging it in the back waistband of her coat before increasing her speed.

She knew Asriel wouldn't use Lyra, that was what the kitchen boy was for, but Lyra and Asriel were both as mad as each other when they were angry, and until she saw her daughter not in Asriel's cage, she wouldn't breathe easily.

She was at the cusp of the mountain top, she'd seen the footsteps she was following go another way - Lyra? But then she heard the explosion a few metres up and pursued that.

And it was quite something, witnessing the moment a doorway into another world formed. And there Asriel stood in front. He'd done it. The brilliant fool had actually done it. Oh those noses who'd sniggered at him, those tongues that called him names, those fat, pig-ignorant buffoons that'd made him the butt of their conversations for the last twelve years. How they would have to pull their own tongues out, hang their heads in shame and swallow their words. Because Asriel had done it. Immortal Greatness.

She doesn't know what it is that alerts them that she's standing behind them. Perhaps Stelmaria picked up her scent. "If you've come to stop me, you're too late", his shotgun in her direction, Stelmaria stalking towards them.

"Too late to stop the experiment, yes, but not too late to stop you". Her words are empty and she knows he knows it. She'd already seen the kitchen boy lying still in the cage so she had no use of her revolver - _yet -_ because she is yet to find Lyra. Had the procedure killed him? Had Asriel even checked? Call her a hypocrite but was he aware that was his child's best friend?

"Oh I am pleased Marisa you've come to see what I've done".

See what his hatred for the Magisterium has done.

She's torn over her next movements. On the one hand she wants to kiss him senseless for proving everyone - including herself - wrong, on the other, she wants to berate him for so publicly destroying the equilibrium of this world.

"The Magisterium will never allow it", she says, knowing that is precisely why he's done it. This is his revenge for them having stripped everything from him and his last twelve years of grovelling. But at what cost to him? Lyra? Herself? Does he even care?

She starts to walk over to him and he raises his shotgun, but just as she knew Thorold wouldn't shoot her back at the laboratory after he knocked Father MacPhail out, she knew even more that Asriel wasn't going to shoot her.

"It is the end of the Magisterium. After hundreds of years. No more oppression, no more abuse, no more darkness or oppression of knowledge", he continues and Marisa thinks how she had once thought the same when she first ventured into Boreal's world, but soon learnt that enlightenment, however glamorous the camouflage, comes with fatal prices.

She allows Asriel to think he's wooing her with his speeches, staying quiet, knowing he wouldn't listen to her reasonings no matter how sound and unsound his. Because, death to the Authority? To God?

And Asriel wanting to play _god_ by installing a New Republic of Heaven? Could his head get any bigger? He was starting to again sound like her mad lover ... How did he think he could suddenly get people to stop believing in their god and believe in his without provoking fatal feuds and violence? Could he be so disconnected and destructive?

She didn't realise when they remodelled her machine together his vendetta went beyond the Magisterium.

But then there is always a higher figurative mountain for Asriel to climb. He never could just sit back and appreciate the warmth of a fire.

"Oh no we couldn't", she finally interrupts so she doesn't have to hear more.

"Lie about whatever you want, lie about the oblation board, the Magisterium, lie about the girl, but do not lie about your ambition, or who you truly are".

Marisa looks into the sea blue eyes she thought she knew and knew her so well, because he was so wrong. Everything he listed _were_ truly important to her - and Lyra, it was the first time he'd referred to her. "But our child is in this world and my place is with her. That is not a lie".

"You want that?"

Of course! Her heart screams at him, hurt that he would even ask her that question. That he would even think that him illustrating a new start without Lyra would sound more attractive to her!

But then she flinches, feeling Mpangi wrapped in Stelmaria's warmth ... she guesses she has given him reason to believe that. She didn't marry him when he asked her, didn't allow them to become a family, never once brought it up again.

"I want that with everything I have", she throws his words he told her once upon a time back at him, and she sees the imperceptible flinch in his eyes as he remembers a time that until now she hadn't thought that long ago. But it was. They were no longer kids and there are oceans between them.

And it was her fault. This is what her ambition had gotten her. An estranged daughter and ... whatever Asriel was once to her ...

"This is your journey not mine. Goodbye Asriel", wanting to give him one last kiss but turns away. She had to find _her_ daughter. Asriel could no longer be a part their lives now. He couldn't go back, he can only go forward through the portal. There is nothing she or he could do to save him in this world from a death sentence. They could no longer associate themselves with him.

...

_Marisa frowned as she looked through Asriel's reading materials. Various academic texts and papers on Dust, her thesis paper from St Sophia's, and he had some how managed to get his hands on the Oblation Board's classified blueprints for her separation machine._

_'I should shoot Thorold for letting you in', Asriel roared, rounding her and slamming his hand on the desk._

_She'd heard his elephant footsteps a mile off. 'Nothing I haven't seen before. It's my work!' Scowling at him, taking in how much he had changed. Save her confrontation with Grumman the other night, it had been a few years since she had been this close to him. 'Why the interest?'_

_He regarded her before picking up a glass of what she guessed was vodka before knocking it back. 'How did you find out where I was?'_

_Spy flies. She still had an old shirt of his. 'I had my daemon follow your scent'._

_He sneered. 'You've come on behalf of your pimp?' Pointing an accusing finger at her, pouring himself another glass and knocking it back._

_'... Pimp?' She feigned confusion before swallowing. That was a word from Boreal's world. She'd worried how much Grumman had told him. She worried about how much Boreal worried._

_Asriel blushed slightly and averted his eyes. 'That snake has been slithering all over London for Grumman. I knew it would only be a matter of time before he sent his whore', knocking back another._

_She wanted to strangle him, she really did, but she needed to know what he knew. 'Where is Grumman?'_

_'Why do you care?'_

_'I care not for his insults', she hissed. 'Neither yours', spilling the decanter before he could pour another glass._

_He pushed her up against the desk. 'Why? They're true', glowering at her._

_He went to pull away and she grabbed his face, digging her nails into his skin. 'Get your friend's tongue out of your mouth', she growled at him._

_He leaned in and bit her lips, pushing himself back into her, his fingers fumbling for the hem of her dress as he lifted her onto the desk..._

_'... so if I could formulate a blast strong enough, I could perhaps reopen the portal Grumman fell through and follow him into the new worlds', Asriel finished explaining against her skin whilst he fiddled with her hair._

_So that's what Grumman's work is really been about, using weaknesses in the polar points to blast through to other worlds, and he'd come here with Asriel to get funding. But if Grumman was from Boreal's world, he would know that beyond the hemisphere is only space. It was his world that had proven that._

_'You don't believe he speaks truth, do you? Other worlds ... There has to be more than what the Magisterium suppress us to, Marisa'._

_'This is heresy you speak of Asriel', turning to lie on her back. He moved with her burying his face in her abdomen, his fingers now outlining her scarification._

_'You going to tell on me?'_

_She sighed burying her fingers in his hair. He knew she wouldn't ..._

_'... how long does the energy last?'_

_They had been discussing how in the Zombi ceremony, lightening would strike in the sky when separation was completed and witchdoctors harvested the energy for trinkets like spy flies. 'Until the Zombi life force is no longer. I now theorise this is because only a small bolt of energy is released, and the reason is because of the material used. I've since discovered by using metals instead of primitive wood, not only is the method of separation quicker, more humane, and the test subjects exhibit more consciousness, but the energy released is stronger. I've had more than a few secondary shocks from my experiments, believe me', she laughed, looking across at Asriel from where they lounged in front of the dying fire._

_She was enjoying this. Relaxed. Regaling tales and hypotheses. She didn't know how late in the evening or even morning it was. Asriel previously bore no interest in experimental theology. Excluding his first year, his studies had solely concerned that of the political nature. It was nice to share this passion with him._

_'And how did you decide to use a vertical blade-type mechanism, instead of a pulling mechanism'._

_It was the knife._ _'Trial and error', she lied. 'It was another variable that exhibited greater consciousness too...', trailing off, fiddling with her fingers. She didn't know how he felt about her work ... Did he know they experimented on children too...? If he did, she wished he'd say something so she could assure him that she would never use it on Lyra, that she wouldn't declare any success until Pantalaimon had settled._

_The silence between stretched so long she was about to outright tell him, 'I - '_

_' - What metals do you use?'_

_'Uhm, well we started with tin because it's fine', also inspired by the knife, 'but we use an alloy of iron and tin now because - why?' She asked because he was busily moving about the room._

_'Just what you mentioned about the blade mechanism. Perhaps the stronger the metal, the stronger the energy output', returning with a piece of metal. 'Titanium, from New Denmark. I shipped a load back the last exhibition I was on. Perhaps this would be a more successful metal?'_

~xXx~

_Patience_

Patience was a quality Marisa felt she excelled in. After all she'd waited twelve years to get her daughter back. Waited a whole year after Edward's death to be seen - as herself - in public, two more years only dressing in black, and then another five until she was financially independent of his money and property. She spent seven years under Boreal's thumb, five years doing menial tasks for the Magisterium before obtaining a substantial role, and then another two years before her networking amounted to a position equal to her intelligence. Never mind the near twenty years of gossip that has followed her since her father died.

And now, she patiently waits for her spy fly to return with the whereabouts of her daughter. And when she finds her, she will patiently wait for Lyra to trust her, for Lyra to see her as a mother separate from the ambitious woman and her past actions.

She'd asked Lyra back at Bolvanger to choose between her mother and her father, and that had been wrong because it wasn't a competition, and just because she was angry at Asriel, did not mean she had to pass it on to her daughter like her mother had done with her after she'd lost everything but her daughter and the possessions they could carry. Maman manifested her anger by instilling relentless ambition into her to be the best, to prove to everyone that gossiped about them wrong, but look at what she had become because of that anger. What Asriel - that sweet, kind, innocent boy she once knew who would never hurt a fly - had become because of his anger.

She didn't want that for Lyra. It was lonely road, and that wasn't what she or Asriel had wanted for her.

...

_'What about him?' Asriel asked._

_'Pantalaimon'._

_'Pantalaimon?'_

_'Named after the Saint that healed. It means 'all-compassionate', and that's what I want her very soul to be. Just like her father'._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re- watching some of the last episodes in S1 with Marisa, I never fully appreciated the scenes between her and Father MacPhail the first time round, and also that end scene with Asriel. Maybe because I've been analysing and interpreting every second but I think I love those scenes as much I do the ones of her and Lyra together.
> 
> I also rewatched all of Marisa's clips in S2 and again such great material although I don't quite know how I'm going to smoothly link how I've interpreted S1 with what happens in S2, which makes me less confident about how I've written the last few parts of this chapter, but I do like a challenge! I have some ideas, but we'll see what my fingers end up typing when I return to it in a couple of weeks. 
> 
> I had to expand Clara’s back story - the set up they gave you in show was too tempting.
> 
> And also as in my version Marisa has already been to Wills world often, there had to be some sort of confrontation with Grumman.
> 
> Image from the bbc website 
> 
> Until next update! Envy I think.


End file.
